Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House. My Seanad colleagues have outlined the time-line on this issue but this is a more fundamental criticism of the system that has allowed it to continue for so long. In other areas where I am dealing with Departments I am told by officials that unless the Minister tells them to do it, it does not happen. We call ourselves legislators but because the officials will not let things happen, and things do not happen, we are not able or allowed to legislate. When I spoke to Senator Crown's Bill last night I referred to the piece of paper that is in every Department on why something cannot be done.

When there are things that should be done for the most obvious reasons, such as those that Senator Crown has outlined, for example, that a child inhaling cigarette fumes in a car is the equivalent of a firefighter working for eight hours in a forest fire, one has to ask why we would not bring in legislation. Here it is, two years on, yet there are eight more Stages to go. When it is passed in this House it has to go to the other House.

Senator Quinn introduced the Construction Contracts Bill. It made sense. Of course subcontractors should not be left high and dry when the main contractor goes bust. That is not a criticism of this Government because that started under the previous Government. It is the system. This economy and this country have just gone through one of the most fundamental changes in the past five years but the system has not changed. We know this because it has taken two years to get to the third stage in a ten stage process. I hope that the Minister will put his weight behind this. I know that he is working on this issue.

The problem is not the Minister or his concern for this issue. We have met with officials, gardaí, the Department of Health and civil servants but the Attorney General is like the Wizard of Oz, all-seeing and all-knowing yet we can never find out what the Attorney General is actually doing behind the curtain. The Attorney General is not the legislator. She should have a view but every now and then we hear that the Attorney General cannot give an opinion. When there was a question about recalling the Seanad, however, there was no problem circulating the Attorney General’s view on the merits and effect of the recall of the Seanad. The Attorney General should be able to talk to a legislator and identify a person from her office to liaise with the legislator. That is how legislation works. It is not cloak and dagger stuff such that Members of the Opposition or Government cannot speak to the all-seeing and all-knowing Attorney General. I do not care who speaks to the Attorney General but she should sit down and engage in the process.

It is because the process has failed that we are here now, with eight more Stages to go. Will we do it in the lifetime of this Government? I hope that the Government serves every hour of its five years so that we can say, "Yes we can and we did do it". I do not want to see this going into the next Government as Senator Quinn’s Bill did. It is a failure of the process. I am not blaming the Minister or the Department. It is a failure of previous governments that allowed the system to drag its heels for so long that a Bill that so obviously should be ratified and implemented has sat there without moving. If we were not having this debate it could wait another five years.