Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to take much time either. Amendment No. 41 in my name has been ruled out of order. As a result, I plan to speak to amendment No. 42 in Senator Dooley's name because it refers to the same section and provision. I was not trying to impose a charge on the Exchequer, as has been deemed to be the case for the purpose of ruling my amendment out of order. That is an entirely spurious argument, and the amendment would not and could not impose such a charge. I proposed several amendments for parts of the legislation and each has been ruled out of order. In these cases, there are fixed monetary amounts in the Bill that would be fixed in the Act. These refer to what the Minister may or may not prescribe in terms of charges or other matters. Why on Earth would we do that when inflation will change those amounts? God knows we all know inflation is increasing; we hear about it from people who contact us every day.

There are provisions in section 11 that are the subject of amendment No. 42. These provide for charges. The amounts of up to €1 may be absolutely worthless in just a few years, or certainly in a decade or two. The proposal I make is that instead of prescribing these restrictions within the legislation, the Minister should be given the power to vary them by means of regulations. That would be a much more straightforward way for the Government to keep pace with changes in the value of the currency, if that is required, in instead of enshrining the amounts in an inflexible way in the legislation. That is the simple point I wanted to make.