Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I have a note here from the Disability Federation of Ireland stating it seeks a debate in the Seanad on many issues relating to the sectoral plans. This can be done in two ways. I understand the Government will propose that some time in the medium-term future there will be a talking heads session. The correct way is to postpone approval of this until it has been debated. The only other occasion I can recall where similar approval was given was the Appropriations Bill, where Seanad Éireann's powers are limited in any case. We pass that Bill and then we debate it.

We are trivialising disability by suggesting we will nod it through as if the reports do not matter. This means the Minister for Health and Children, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, the Minister for Transport, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and their officials will escape serious accountability.

This was nodded through one committee in a hurry, it is now being nodded through Seanad Éireann and will be nodded through Dáil Éireann. My party will not accept this. I therefore move amendment No. 1:

That item No. 1 on the Order of Business be taken at 7 p.m. for an open-ended debate, to continue for as long as Seanad Éireann wishes to continue it; at the end of the debate, having heard all of these Ministers or their representatives, the House will then take a decision on whether to approve the sectoral plans.

The idea that sectoral plans to do with what this Government turned into the most elaborate display of hoop-la, bells and whistles when it was announced should be nodded through both Houses of the Oireachtas with virtually no serious debate is preposterous. Each of those Ministers should have been scrutinised before the appropriate Oireachtas committee. That is what accountability means. To ask them questions after the event is not accountability. It is somewhat discomfiting for a Minister and takes up half an hour when he or she could be elsewhere, but it is not accountability. I therefore move the amendment to the Order of Business that a debate should commence at 7 p.m. and continue until all Members of the Seanad have spoken, and then we take a decision.

On an unrelated issue, does the Acting Leader know anything about the peculiar situation concerning penalty points incurred in this country in September, not for breaking an amber light or driving in the wrong place on a motorway, but for driving without insurance, in which 3,642 offences were identified by the Garda. Of the 3,642 offences, in 3,454 cases the Garda could not identify who the drivers were and they got off. Only 180 out of the 3,642 people involved were issued with penalty points because the rest could not be identified.

The Government is probably slightly exuberant because of a couple of aberrant opinion polls. I hope it gets over its exuberance and figures out at least the basic level of competence, which means we cannot have 3,500 different cars identified in a month with virtually 95% of the drivers remaining unpunished even though we know they are driving without insurance. For God's sake, is the Government serious about anything or is it all smoke and mirrors and deception?