Joe O'Toole (Independent)

-----would share my view. I urge the Minister to take a realistic and practical view on this. I will not push the amendment to a vote. This is about tidying up legislation, which is the business of the House.

Including this provision begs the question as to why it is there. Does it mean a Minister could approve a plan which did not comply with the law of the State or of the European Union? It is nonsensical to suggest that might happen. If a Minister did that, he would be in breach of the law. There is an implication here that a Minister might in some situations do things that would be in breach of the law but because he is a Minister and is implementing another piece of law, it will be okay. The provision is unnecessary. In all fairness, we know we must keep within the law. Otherwise, we must ask ourselves what we are doing here. To insert a provision to provide that Ministers, too, must obey the law of the land might have been necessary in the old communist regimes where Ministers had to look after each other and give each other special areas of consideration in working life, including special traffic lanes. In a modern democracy, however, we take it for granted that a Minister is as amenable to the law of the land as the rest of us and that legislators are no more above the law than anybody else.

I ask the Minister to accept the proposal and remove those lines from the Bill. It will do nothing to NAMA. In fact, removing the provision gives credibility and respectability to the legislation. There is no need for it. It implies that we are unsure of and lack trust in our Ministers and that we cannot allow them to do what they are elected to do. We are saying: "You must keep the law, Minister." Think about that. I appeal to the Minister to be sensible about this.