Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. First, I am much more inexperienced legislator than he is but in the past four and half years I have spent here, I have seen the Government table amendments to Government Bills. We see this on a regular basis. We all faced a deadline of last Monday for amendments to this Bill and it was absolutely open to the Minister to bring forward an amendment to his own Bill.Why, therefore, did he not do it this week, as opposed to having to set up a whole new process in September? That does not make sense to me.

The second thing I want to say is in regard to my use of the "arrogance”. I was very carefully using the word “arrogance” and I felt the Minister was disingenuous in how he characterised what I said, because I used the word “arrogance” in the context of him questioning the ethics of the clinicians who raised concerns with us. I would have liked to have thought that if a Minister for Health heard a Senator or Deputy raise the concerns of a clinician, those concerns would at least have been listened to, as opposed to being dismissed out of hand and their ethics being questioned. That is at the heart of why I believe there was an arrogance in the Minister’s reply. I will respectfully await the legislation in September. I will be here to support it and I will say “Tá” all the way, but it makes no sense to me that the Department has sat on its hands for the past week and did not table an amendment to do what the Minister says he is going to do.