Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

They were done in accordance with the ability to pay. This Government's position and values were expressed in the Croke Park II agreement, which does not get any mention in the Minister's speech, and reflected an attitude of unfairness and pitting one side against the other.

I object most strenuously to the guillotining of this legislation. There is a specific commitment in the programme for Government to have staging and space between the stages of legislation and not to have guillotines. The Government made much of this in Opposition. We accept that there are occasions when legislation needs to be put through faster than is normal practice but the amount of guillotines and bad legislative practice is surely at record levels under this Government.