David Norris (Independent)

Not only is it not good enough, it is an insult to the House. If the Minister of State wished to sustain the position that the advice comes from the Revenue Commissioners, presumably they produced an argument. Is it a budgetary issue? Do they think money will be saved? Will the Minister of State be kind enough to outline how much money he will save by excluding human rights? It would be interesting to know the value the Government puts on human rights. Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Perhaps the Revenue Commissioners are putting a price on human rights because they are unaware of their value. I do not wish to demonise them because they do a great deal of extremely good and important work and the State would have great difficulty functioning without them. It is easy to target an organisation such as this and pillory it but I do not wish to do so.

The Revenue Commissioners may well be acting in the light of their remit as an organ of State but it is up to politicians to stand up to them, to make their own decisions and not to be guided by them. We are living in the 21st century, not the 17th century. The Minister of State has acknowledged that some of the formulations are not new. Why will they not accept this one which has a cultural ancestry but may not have been formulated previously? The Minister of State has absolutely no case whatever and I appeal to him to take further advice on this, as he said he would on earlier issues.