Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As I understand it, the proposal is that each Member will have 12 minutes, including the Minister. The Minister should have ten minutes to respond.

I thank the Leader for acceding to this amendment. I have said at the Committee on Procedure and Privileges that if one goes back to Senator W.B Yeats’s speech about how we are no petty people, under our speaking rules, he would have got about a quarter of the way through it before he would have been told to sit down. We should be slightly more generous to ourselves.

The Attorney General has a right of audience in this House under Standing Order 56. Perhaps he could exercise it in the circumstances.