Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two issues.I would like a guarantee from the Leader of the House that the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017, perpetrated by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, will not be guillotined in this House. If I do not get this guarantee I will call a vote in the House on it today. It is a very serious Bill, which has caused extraordinary disarray between the Judiciary and politicians. It is absolutely outrageous. It might have been done on the precipice of a wing, in the sense that Fine Gael had nowhere else to go with it and had to commit to it. It is not coming from a centrality of purpose, at least I do not feel it is, but that is for my argument. I would like a guarantee from the Leader that it will not be guillotined. I do not care if it does not come here until September or October or whenever, but whenever it does it should not be guillotined.

Equally as serious, and anybody living on the other side of Longford should listen to this, the former chairman of the Western Development Commission, Mr. Paddy McGuinness, told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs he was resigning because of frustration with Departments, the Government and the commission. He was not given his enhanced rule. There were turf wars. There has been no board in place since February 2014. He said what is happening is absolutely appalling. He said in spite of the good work done by the Western Development Commission the region is actually failing and falling further behind and things are not been delivered.

He said the final straw was the handling of an allocation of €2 million in 2015 to develop a pilot strategic regional development office. We all speak about the development of the west of Ireland. Here is a man who was the director of the commission and who has resigned. The moneys were appropriated as capital expenditure. The proposal did not need nor could use capital expenditure, but over 18 months of representation he failed to have the funds transferred to current expenditure. As a result, no progress has been made on an exciting initiative, and to date not a cent of the €2 million has been spent. The Minister, Deputy Ring, is without portfolio but is supposed to have a portfolio for rural Ireland. I ask that he come to the House and tell us exactly what is going on with the Western Development Commission. What will happen Mr. Paddy McGuinness? Who will listen to him? What happened when he was the director and what is going on? As far as I am concerned it is all window dressing and no reality.