Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

—— at the notion that a major policy announcement would be made outside the House. We must reassert the authority and primacy of politics. Last September at the start of these talks when going into Dublin Castle the Taoiseach said that his key objectives were health and education because those were the latest buzzwords coming from focus groups. As Fianna Fáil was in trouble, health and education were the priority matters last September. When I heard that interview, I wondered why the Taoiseach needed to go social partnership to address health and education. These matters should be addressed here. If we are serious about Dáil reform, we should be serious about this amendment. It would send out the right signal that we intended to re-engineer the process and do something more by encouraging more people into the House to debate these matters.

People do not come into this House and the other one as they feel it makes no difference. I speak as much on behalf of Government backbenchers as I do on behalf of Opposition spokespeople. We need to reassert the authority and primacy of politics in this country. The only way to do so is by forcing Governments into the Houses of the Oireachtas to face their responsibility there. I was not aware that it had originally been planned not to sit next week. Where did that come from? It makes no sense for the Government to do this four weeks before a summer recess. While the amendment is specific to social partnership, it is more important in terms of establishing, as I have described it, the primacy of politics in this country. We need to get back to basics.