When is it proposed to take Report Stage of this Bill?
Bula Limited (Acquisition of Shares) Bill, 1977: Order for Report Stage.
I move:
That the Report Stage be taken next Tuesday.
I move the following amendment:
To delete the words "next Tuesday" and substitute the words "Tuesday, 29th March, 1977".
I will not be available next week or the following week. In the circumstances I wonder would the Minister agree to take Report Stage on Tuesday, 29th March, 1977.
With regret I am unable to accede to that request. We have had six continuous weeks now dealing with this Bill. I have missed two meetings of the Council of Ministers. While I appreciate Deputy O'Malley has pressures on his time, I have pressures on mine also in other areas. With regret I must decline to accept his suggestion.
The Chair will appreciate that I have facilitated the Minister on a number of occasions in regard to a Bill which is at present before a committee of this House, as well as having facilitated him in relation to Bills and other business over the past year or two. It has been the tradition of this House, within reason, to facilitate the Opposition spokesmen. I recall when I was Government Whip on numerous occasions putting back business which was urgent from the Government's point of view in order to facilitate the spokesman concerned, in some cases for, perhaps, two or three weeks, because of his non-availability at the time for one reason or another.
I would have hoped that tradition could have been maintained and that the Minister would, even at this stage, see his way to agree to a request which is not unreasonable. We have now reached Report Stage and only Report and Final Stages are left. In the nature of things there cannot be a lengthy debate on Report Stage of any Bill because, in general, speakers can only speak once. In those circumstances, there is every reason to believe that if Report Stage is taken on Tuesday, 29th March, the Bill could be completed on Wednesday, 30th, which would be quite reasonable.
I have sympathy for what Deputy O'Malley says but I must plead the pressure of other commitments. I accept his commitments and I must plead that he will accept mine. As I said, I have missed two meetings of the Council of Ministers which I regret missing because it was important that I should have attended them. I have other pressing commitments and I regret that I cannot accede to his request.
Is it not true that in the past few weeks at least this Bill has been dealt with on only one day? If that caused the Minister to miss a meeting of the Council of Ministers, could not the Bill have been ordered for a day other than the Tuesday on which it was held so that he would not have had to miss it? Further, in view of that fact, does it not appear that there is not an undue rush so far as the Minister is concerned in having the Bill completed? If there were, one would have expected it would have been ordered more frequently than it was.
The position is that over the past three or four weeks the Bill was ordered, as Deputy Colley said, on one day only during each week and that day was the shortest day of all, Tuesday, when a maximum of three-and-a-half hours are available for public business other than Question Time. If the Bill were as urgent as the Minister now seems to suggest, or if the ordering of it on Tuesday interfered with his attendance at meetings of the Council of Ministers, surely it could have been ordered for Wednesday when a much longer day would have been available and it would have been possible to get through it more quickly. In those circumstances, would the Minister not follow the tradition of the House and agree to my reasonable request that the Bill be taken on 29th March and hopefully—although there could be no guarantee of this—completed on the following day, 30th March.
I regret that my position is as I have stated it. While I appreciate the Deputy's difficulties, I think he and the House must appreciate mine.
It is obvious to me that we cannot get agreement on this matter. We will have to decide it in the usual fashion.
I should like to put on record that in the history of this Dáil —and we have now been in Opposition for three-and-a-half years this is the first time we have asked to have the precedent which has been established in previous Dáil adhered to. The instructions from our party Leader are: "Whatever business the Government order, fall in line with it and let us not be left open to the charge of having impeded business in any shape or form." This is a serious Bill. An agreement has been made. Our spokesman has not been able to get appropriate answers from the Minister over a long period. It is unfortunate that the Minister should be pressing to have Report Stage taken next week. I would ask him again not to break with a precedent which has been created over a long period.
While I appreciate what Opposition Deputies have said, in the light of my other commitments and in the light of the fact that we have debated this Bill for six continuous weeks, my position is not unreasonable.
It is a distortion.
I have given the House the utmost latitude in the hope of reaching agreement but, in the absence of such, I must put the question.
I want to make a final appeal to the Minister to accede to this simple request and not to upset what has been a long established precedent. Those of us who have acted as Whips are aware that the Opposition can dictate the time when any Bill will finish if they want to. Frequently I had to go through the frustration in the days of the late Deputy Sweetman that if we could not find agreement, as he wanted it, he made sure the Bill ended only when he wished it to end. The Opposition have to be facilitated. We could hold up the Bill for a month if we wanted to.
I can only observe that in my period as a Minister I believe at all times I have been reasonable. I believe I am being reasonable now. I am not seeking a confrontation. I am not seeking delay. I have my commitments as well as Deputies in Opposition. I appreciate theirs and they can appreciate mine.
If the Minister is under the misapprehension that if I am away he will get an easier ride he is making a mistake.
I have to put the question that the Fourth Stage of this Bill be taken on Tuesday next. That has been moved by the Minister. An amendment has been moved by Deputy O'Malley to delete "next Tuesday" and insert "29th March". I am putting the amendment in the usual form that the words proposed to be deleted stand.
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 61; Níl, 55.
Tá
- Barry, Peter.
- Barry, Richard.
- Begley, Michael.
- Belton, Luke.
- Belton, Paddy.
- Bermingham, Joseph.
- Bruton, John.
- Burke, Joan T.
- Burke, Liam.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Cluskey, Frank.
- Collins, Edward.
- Conlan, John F.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Cooney, Patrick M.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Crotty, Kieran.
- Cruise-O'Brien, Conor.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Dockrell, Maurice.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- O'Sullivan, John L.
- Pattison, Seamus.
- Reynolds, Patrick J.
- Ryan, John J.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Spring, Dan.
- Donnellan, John.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Enright, Thomas.
- Esmonde, John G.
- Finn, Martin.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Cavan).
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Gilhawley, Eugene.
- Governey, Desmond.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hegarty, Patrick.
- Hogan O'Higgins, Brigid.
- Jones, Denis F.
- Keating, Justin.
- Kelly, John.
- Kenny, Enda.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- Malone, Patrick.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- O'Brien, Fergus.
- O'Donnell, Tom.
- Staunton, Myles.
- Taylor, Frank.
- Timmins, Godfrey.
- Toal, Brendan.
- Tully, James.
- White, James.
Níl
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Andrews, David.
- Barrett, Sylvester.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Ben.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Seán.
- Brugha, Ruairí.
- Burke, Raphael P.
- Callanan, John.
- Calleary, Seán.
- Carter, Frank.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, Gerard.
- Connolly, Gerard.
- Cronin, Jerry.
- Crowley, Flor.
- Daly, Brendan.
- Davern, Noel.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dowling, Joe.
- Fahey, Jackie.
- Farrell, Joseph.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Fitzgerald, Gene.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin Central).
- Gallagher, Denis.
- Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.
- Gibbons, Hugh.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Healy, Augustine A.
- Kenneally, William.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Leonard, James.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacSharry, Ray.
- Meaney, Tom.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Moore, Seán.
- Murphy, Ciarán.
- Noonan, Michael.
- O'Connor, Timothy.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Malley, Desmond.
- Power, Patrick.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Timmons, Eugene.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Walsh, Seán.
- Wilson, John P.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Kelly and B. Desmond; Níl, Deputies Lalor and Browne.
Question declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
Report Stage ordered for Tuesday, March, 15th, 1977.