Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and I endorse the remarks made around the House on his personal achievements as Minister. He has not, as Senator Ward said, been there for years. He has been there for less than a year and during that year he has had a torrid time. Cowardly keyboard warriors have used anonymity in the most vile campaign of abuse against him and I totally dissociate myself from that. I compliment those, including our Oireachtas colleague, Deputy Berry, who are doing the jabbing most efficiently and courteously.

I fully endorse what has been said by virtually every speaker in this House. This should not be coming before the House in these circumstances. This day has been clear for a long time. It is not a mystery that the sunset clause was coming today. This amendment is not just to bring things out to next November. As Senator Higgins said, it is to put in place the power to indefinitely keep re-extending these powers ad nauseam. It is not a time-limited measure. When the Houses of the Oireachtas are confronted with the motion to extend, it is a binary "Yes" or "No" with no inquiry as to whether it was good, bad or indifferent, whether the regulations did or did not work well or whether right or wrong things were done. There is none of that, just vote "Yes" or "No" and the party whips will see it through. That is what we are voting for today.

These Houses of the Oireachtas have failed miserably over the last year. The Oireachtas Commission should not be proud of what it has done. The fact we are apportioning a couple of hours today and an hour tomorrow to this legislation is a scandal and should be called out for what it is. There was, before this Government was formed, an all-party Dáil committee chaired by Deputy McNamara.Its function was to keep the Covid scrutiny issue under control. It was disbanded and a complete untruth was propagated as to why it was being disbanded, which was that the sectoral committees would deal with the Covid crisis quite adequately and that that was the way to go. That suits Ministers and, perhaps, the establishment in this House, but it did not happen. NPHET was never made accountable to that committee; it appeared before it on one occasion or, maybe, two and it was not a pretty sight.

We now have to understand that it is our duty to insist on accountability and that we cannot just give a licence or a broad blank cheque to the Government to continue as if nothing has happened. As a Parliament, we have to get our act together too. It may be politically unpopular, but that involves acknowledging that every Member of this House and his or her staff are vital workers in the democratic process and should get the jab as quickly as possible so that we can resume normal business and have normal scrutiny of parliamentary activity as the Constitution requires. It requires a little bit of courage to say that that should be done. I know there are people who will say that that is jumping the queue, but it is not. Today, the queue has brought us to the point where we are rubber-stamping legislation and giving an open-ended licence to continue to keep these emergency measures in place.

There are many issues that I would like to address today if I had more time. I would like to address the announcement by the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, regarding the new immigration and card entry system into the UK and how that is going to integrate with the Irish common travel area. I would like to talk about how our relationship with the Schengen travel arrangement is going to function. There are many issues that we are allowing to go undebated and undiscussed in this House. I would like to know if this legislation is really necessary and, if there is a third or fourth wave, or a new variant, it is ever sensible to say that intercounty travel should be banned. Is it ever sensible to do that? I want Professor Philip Nolan to come before a committee and demonstrate to me that banning intercounty travel and imposing a 5 km route is the way to deal with this issue.

We should not be doing what we are doing today. It is wrong and it is weak. There are no longer leaders and Whips meetings to decide on the business of this House. That is scandalous. In the last session, when I and others supported this emergency legislation as first tabled, it was on the basis of a prior discussion as to how much time would be available. Now, that has disappeared. I appeal to the Members of this House to make it very clear to the Oireachtas Commission in particular that we want to get back to business. We do not want this House to be in suspension. The amendments we tabled on 30 September were to allow this House to come back and function normally and to allow the Government time, if there was a case for an extension, to make it to a fully functioning Oireachtas of both Houses.