Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It leaves us in a very strange position in that we are being asked to make provision for a section with which none of us agrees or, at any rate, with which the great majority of us disagree. I have repeatedly asked the Government to publish the text of its proposed amendments to section 44 in order that we can consider whether we are content to allow section 44(1)(b) to remain as it is in the Bill. If we are to make provision for it, we should know what is intended, but we are being asked to play blind man's buff.

The Minister knows well that this legislation has been debated at length in this House.There are few points that should be put on the record of this House in that context. The Bill came to this House in what the Attorney General described as dog's dinner condition and so the Government could not override this House and deem it to be law. The Government has been effectively afflicted by the fact that it has to get the agreement of this House to its passage. The Commission of the European Union and the GRECO committee of the Council of Europe have condemned the scheme of this Bill. Not only have they done that, but it emerged from a recent freedom of information request that officials-----