Alex White (Labour)

I support what Senator O'Toole said about the Irish Human Rights Commission. He is right to point to the experience of the equality organisations, especially the Equality Authority and the punishment that was meted out to it for its activity, many of the positions it took up and its support for many cases which were taken against public bodies. The criticism against the Government that the decisions it made were motivated by a desire to clip the wings of those organisations it felt were making life uncomfortable for it has never been adequately answered.

I wish to pick up on the point of the criticism the Irish Human Rights Commission has made in respect of rushed legislation and ask the Leader again to address the question that has been raised in the House ad nauseam in respect of rushed legislation, especially in the criminal justice area. I note the Leader proposes to order all Stages of the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill for next Tuesday afternoon. I simply cannot understand why he proposes to do so after the experience of this week when he insisted on ordering all Stages of the enforcement legislation on a particular day. I wonder what support there was on the other side of the House for it based on some of the comments made by Members opposite about his decision. We asked for a break between the taking of all Stages of that legislation, but the Leader stubbornly refused to agree to it. At the end of the day a break occurred because of the way matters went in this House, there was an overnight break and that legislation was changed by means of amendments from this side of the House which could not have happened if the Leader had had his way. The legislation was improved because there was an overnight gap in the taking of it which allowed the Attorney General and the Minister to consider proposals from this side of the House.

I wish to ask the Leader about a matter which has been raised by Senator Norris. If amendments are brought forward to Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill in this House next week, what will happen in respect of the Bill then? Will it go back to the Dáil? There is no intention of it being brought back to the Dáil after this House deals with it next week. The Leader should be honest with us about that. Why is he again stubbornly insisting on ordering all Stages of this most important legislation on the one day? Could he not at least take the bad look off it, given that the House will sit two days next week, and order that it be taken over two days? The Leader should at least do that for this House. He should at least demonstrate some respect for this House as its Leader in order that we might have some input into such extraordinarily important legislation. Otherwise we are reducing the relevance of this House. We talk about criticism in the newspapers of the passage of Bills stumping through and so on, but the Members of this House, the Leader in particular, are complicit in the reduction publicly of the relevance of this House in the manner in which we are proceeding.