Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator Higgins put it very well and set our her stall on both amendments.

I am very heavily reliant in discussing the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill on the Bill digest that was done by the Library and Research Service. I acknowledge and thank Dr. Deirdre Halloran and Ms Michelle Lynch, senior parliamentary researchers in law in the Oireachtas, for their very extensive piece of work. We are very lucky in this House that we have such support and backup for our work. The Minister will be very familiar with how the Bill digest works and how the various concerns are flagged.

At the outset, I said that we must remember we are democrats. We believe in parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side we come from, we have a Government that is not in the habit of accepting any amendments in this House. A league table is being run on every amendment since this Dáil was formed and it makes for very interesting reading in the Seanad. I look forward to commenting on that later. We are way past mid-term for this Government anyway. The table makes for an appalling read in terms of parliamentary democracy, but we have to live with that in the knowledge that it will not always happen. The Government is going to run its course and I hope there will be other opportunities in the future. The Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which examined this issue, is made up of members from all parties. It is extraordinary to note the absence of some of them from the debates on the Bill both in this House and in the Dáil. I do not understand how a report can be agreed and then the people who agreed it do not follow up on it. I went to the trouble of reading the transcripts of some of what these individuals had to say in the committee. They were going to move heaven and earth to bring in the proposed changes, but all that talk has gone dead. This highlights the absolute control of the party Whip structure and system. That is a discussion for another day but I had to mention it. People are banging their heads against walls in frustration. Journalists and researchers are talking to me about it. Victims of abuse are asking what is going on in our parliamentary democracy. We have people saying they believe the victims and think what is being done is awful but they cannot put their head above the parapet or it will be chopped off. It is a sad commentary on democracy.

The committee made 21 recommendations in its report. That committee is made up of party members from across the Houses.