Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge my error in thinking that the Bill was to conclude on Report Stage today. I apologise for that misunderstanding on my part.

My central point was that I am concerned about the ruling out of order of these amendments because I believe they were sufficiently relevant. I disagree with my colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, on that. She has, of course, grabbed the headline of the day by suggesting there are charities in Ireland getting money from Russian oligarchs. All I want to say is, please, tell us more. I am on the record as opposing and decrying foreign money from wherever it comes, be it from Chuck Feeney, for all his good work with universities, or Amnesty International getting money from George Soros around the time of the abortion referendum, which was not acceptable. I am sure what the Senator has to talk about will be equally unacceptable and we look forward to hearing more about that. Perhaps legislation will be necessary to deal with this issue.

I thank the Minister for mentioning the HSE corporate governance framework. The point of my amendments flows from the fact that there is far too much latitude. It should not be a matter of discretion by the HSE to turn a blind eye to the fact that certain organisations have not supplied audited accounts in circumstances where other organisations would lose their funding. It seems that some bettering of the discretion of the HSE may be necessary in this area. When the Bill referred to by the Minister comes forward, I hope we will not be told when bringing amendments, similar to those I have attempted to bring forward today, that legislation to do with the corporate governance of the HSE is somehow different from the standards that the HSE must apply when taking decisions about how it exercises its decision-making capacity.I do not want to hear it argued that the structure of the corporate governance is one thing and the decisions the HSE takes on the funding of organisations is another. Neither do I want to hear that my amendments are to be ruled out of order on the basis of some such spurious distinction. My frustration and that of many Members of this House flows from this simple fact: if the Minister had sought to bring forward amendments such as I have brought forward, as the sponsor of this Bill, he would have had no problem. There would have been no objection. It is those of us who seek to amend legislation who are fettered in our attempts to do so, and as the Minister knows, we have relatively few opportunities to bring forward Private Members' legislation. My overall point is there needs to be a more generous and inclusive attitude to serious attempts to amend legislation, and the invocation of the rule around relevance to the subject matter of the Bill must not be done in such a broad and extensive way as to prevent legitimate issues, which are considerably well related to the subject matter of Bills, from being brought forward.