Alex White (Labour)

I welcome the Minister to the House. Nothing Senator Donohoe has just said could be remotely interpreted as being vicious or anything other than a thoughtful analysis of the issue.

I am a little perplexed about the urgent nature of this legislation. I want to tease out that aspect and perhaps the Minister will respond on it. The Minister indicated that it arose when the powers of the Health Service Executive to fund the new national paediatric hospital development board were being examined and that when the Attorney General was examining the various orders that have been made under the 1961 Act the issue arose as to whether they might be in breach of Article 15 of the Constitution, which essentially states that sole legislative power rests with the Oireachtas. I am surprised by that because we are all familiar with primary legislation but we are also familiar with secondary legislation, and Ministers make orders every month of the year, some of considerable substance. Although I have seen statutory instruments and regulations being challenged on different occasions, this is a serious statement by the Attorney General and the Government, drawing into question decades of orders made under the 1961 legislation. If they are so infirm, and the Minister indicated earlier today that the Government discussed the issue of the local government orders yesterday and will come back to that in the new year, where does that leave the powers of the Minister for Education and Science to set up bodies? What about the range of delegated powers of considerable substance that Ministers exercise every day of the week and month of the year? Are they all open to question? If they are, that is a very serious issue for these Houses and for the public.

If it is urgent to resolve the issue in the context of the 1961 Health (Corporate Bodies) Act with which we are dealing with here, and if there is now a question mark over the orders relating to local government bodies, why would the resolution of that issue not be urgent also? Why can that wait until 2008 whereas this one must be done now? I am genuinely perplexed about the urgency of this issue, not in a vicious sense — I say that to Senator Cannon or anybody else — but in a genuinely inquiring sense.

I ask the Minister to consider giving us more information and publishing the Attorney General's opinion as to the basis upon which it has now been concluded that questions arise about the constitutional status of all these orders because it has wider implications. Did the legal advice the Attorney General got from the counsel he instructed also range into the other areas of local government bodies, and possibly education bodies? How were the wider implications of this very serious issue treated by whoever gave the advice to the Attorney General? It is clear that advice, and the Attorney General's opinion, should be published on a matter of such huge import.

I do not agree with Senator de Búrca and others who said this is simply a technical Bill. There are technical aspects to it but it is not technical if the Houses of the Oireachtas are being asked to take a view that a range of orders extending back almost 50 years have questionable constitutional validity and to put that right. That is not simply a technical question; it is a matter of huge import and one we must take seriously. It relates to the issue of time being afforded to the debate on this Bill, a point made earlier by a number of colleagues. It is not just a question of whether the Houses will sit all night. That is reducing the issue to a question of time on the floor. This is a matter of interest to the public. We are here on the trust of the public. It is not just a question of the time I, Senator Twomey or anybody else has to analyse a Bill. It is a question of the constitutional job we are doing on the part of the public and one week is not enough time between the publication of this Bill and the final Stages being reached in both Houses of the Oireachtas. That undermines the trust the public is entitled to have in these institutions. I think twice about using the word "abuse" but it is an abuse of the system we have set out in the Constitution for dealing with issues such as this.

The Bill is also about co-location, at least in part, and perhaps that explains the urgency issue.