Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Let us be clear about this. The religious zealotry the Bill exhibits in ensuring that, for instance, the chairman of the committee that does the drafting of the technical legal criteria may not be a lawyer is the exclusionary rule. If the Minister wants to look for apartheid in this Bill, it is remarkable that the procedures committee itself, which is a sub-committee of a majority lay body, must be a committee where one is debarred from having any function in chairing it, even in the absence of the chairperson, if one knows anything about law. That is reprehensible.

I will not argue the matter any further than that because the Minister has dug in on this matter but it is unfortunate that the wisdom of the Scots in this area is being ignored by a Government that seems to rely on the wisdom of the Scots in so many other ways.