Seanad debates

Tuesday, 17 November 2020

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

10:30 am

Photo of Paul GavanPaul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Order of Business states we will take the motion regarding appointment of the chairperson and an ordinary member to the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, without debate. Like my colleague beside me, I do not think this is a healthy practice. I propose a change to the Order of Business whereby we have a debate before any appointment is made. Sinn Féin will not accept this motion without debate and nobody else in the Chamber should either. Unless people have been in a coma for the past fortnight, they will know that when the Tánaiste was Taoiseach he passed a confidential document to the then head of the National Association of General Practitioners, NAGP, and we also know a Deputy has lodged a formal complaint over this action to the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO. Today, we see the Government wishing to appoint, without debate, a former professional lobbyist for the NAGP to SIPO. The former lobbyist can then adjudicate on the issue of the confidential document released to the NAGP by the Tánaiste. The person in question only ever lobbied for one organisation, the NAGP. I understand she lobbied on no less than eight occasions for the NAGP in 2017 and 2018.You could not make this up. The arrogance and the apparent stance to the effect that there is nothing to see here are astounding. I am looking across the Chamber to see if there is anyone at all on the Government benches who is prepared to say that perhaps they should pause this process and that we should have a debate on this topic before proceeding any further. This is also yet another example of the cosy insider club that operates across this body politic. It appears that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have for years been operating an arrangement whereby they take it in turns to fill this position with one of their own each time it comes around.

The second issue I wish to deal with is that of Fine Gael's sister party, Fidesz, which, as Senators will know, has today scuppered the EU budget. I have personal experience of Fidesz. I met a number of its Government Ministers two years ago when they were cracking jokes about the final solution in the context of immigrant children. I went to see two teenage children, the same age as my own, who had been imprisoned in a cage for a year without ever being let out. I need to ask the following question this morning: when will the Fine Gael Party decide to call for the expulsion of Fidesz from the European Peoples' Party, EPP? We have been talking about this for long enough but it has not happened. It is frankly beyond comprehension that Fine Gael can sit comfortably with an openly fascist party as a member of the EPP. It is high time we had a debate on that topic as well.

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