This guillotine motion makes another massive dent in this Government's credibility, in their general credibility as a Government but particularly their bona fides on the issue of Dáil reform. We are dealing here with one of the most spiteful pieces of legislation this Dáil has even seen. Not alone do the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste want to bring forward a mean, debasing piece of legislation but they now want to railroad it through the Oireachtas. In order to do that they are prepared to set at risk all the work that has been done so far on the establishment of committees and everything that has so far been agreed in regard to Dáil reform.
I have never, in my time in this House, seen political animus brought to such an extent. I do not think anybody in the country believes that this piece of legislation is being brought forward for the benefit and the improvement of the planning process. It is a dirty piece of legislation. It is a mean, debasing piece of legislation. It has no motivation except party political vindictiveness.
My colleagues on this side of the House have outlined the various defficiencies there are in the measure — the fact that it will not improve the planning process in any way, the fact that it is grossly unfair to a large number of decent honourable people. All these criticisms have been made from this side of the House. Nevertheless the Government persist and we are totally convinced that they are persisting with this simply on the basis of the lowest party, partisan, political objectives.
We on this side of the House are very worried about the attitude of the Government in this regard from a number of points of view. I will mention one of them. In discussions with the Minister for Industry and Energy we agreed to the setting up of a new committee to deal with legislation. We are not totally convinced of the merits of that committee or that it is any way a very valuable initiative or departure. Nevertheless, we, being reasonable parliamentarians, felt that if the Minister concerned was very keen on it and thought there was some merit in it, we would at least give it a trial. We were very concerned about one aspect of it and I mentioned this to the Minister for Industry and Energy on a number of occasions. That was that the legislation coming before this House, which, in the normal course of events, would be fully debated here in open forum with the press and the public present, can be referred to this new committee by a motion of a member of the Government. We were prepared to agree to that on condition that that would be done by agreement. Finally, we came to an informal arrangement or understanding that that agreement would be on the basis of the sort of agreement which normally prevails in regard to the ordering of business here in the House. In view of this development today, the fact that the Government in order to pursue their own base political objectives are prepared to throw out the normal procedures of agreement, I am not prepared to participate in that particular committee at any rate until this question of whether or not legislation can be referred to it by agreement is straightened out. That is the sort of thing that has been put in jeopardy by the Government in bringing forward this guillotine motion.
Our Chief Whip has pointed out that we are not filibustering this piece of legislation. I want to remind the House that on the last occasion we had a major piece of planning legislation before the House we spent I think 11 days on the Committee Stage and Deputy Jim Tully, who was Minister for Local Government at the time, went through that Bill line by line, section by section, in Committee and on Report Stage. He dealt with every argument we put up. He listened to our arguments and accepted some of them, made changes and so on. Eventually we got a Planning Act. This Government and this Labour Minister want to put through a Bill on Committee Stage in four or five hours. I want to attack the Tánaiste's bona fides in doing that. I cannot accept that he has the planning process and its improvement genuinely at heart if he wants to put a major Planning Bill through this House in a five hour Committee Stage.
That is one of the reasons we are opposing this guillotine motion. We cannot see that any useful public purpose will be met by proceeding with what is now proposed. Our Whip has pointed that we have 40 speakers anxious to contribute. I can think of very few things that we talk about in this House, apart from taxation, which more basically affects the ordinary everyday lives of our people than physical planning and the environment. It affects practically every aspect of the daily life of a citizen — the type of house he lives in, the type of estates we are going to build, where our schools are situated, the traffic system. These are all clearly bound up in the question of physical planning.
This business of physical planning and our environment is essentially a social matter. Because it is a social matter it must be a political matter. We totally reject this idea of depoliticising the planning process. The attempt in this Bill is apparently to hand over this fundamentally important social matter to unknown, unrepresentative, self-appointed groups and to take it away from us, the representatives of the people, whether in this House or at local level. The whole process is a fraud and we are totally opposed to the Bill. We are certainly opposed to this undemocratic jackboot attempt to railroad it through this House in this manner. I find it very hypocritical on the part of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to be prating and preaching about Dáil reform and making this House more relevant and involving Dáil Deputies more closely in the whole parliamentary process, in the Government and the executive function, when they do this sort of thing. I ask them, even at this late stage to understand, realise, acknowledge and admit that they have made a major mistake in the matter, that they have done it out of a fit of pique. The story around this House is that the procedures were generally agreed between the Tánaiste, his Minister of State, the Whips and others that this matter could be left over and dealt with more fully and comprehensively when we resumed. However, in some fit of pique the Taoiseach personally intervened and decided that this Bill must be railroaded through before we rise for the summer.
While I am on that subject, I would like to make some comments on something which a political commentator stated in one of our national dailies this morning. He said that the Government are going to drop the axe, the guillotine on this Bill and that they are prepared to keep on dropping it until such time as they get all their legislation through before the summer recess. Perhaps we should make the situation clearer in that regard. This really is the only legislation which the Government have on hands. The rest are of importance, but are not going to cause anybody any difficulty. We are prepared to let them through this House in an hour. There are only two other pieces of legislation on hands. One is the Bill dealing with the flags of convenience — the fisheries Bill and the other is a turf Bill to increase the amount of capital available to Bord na Móna. They are two important measures, admittedly, but two measures which we are going to give the Government without any hesitation. Wherever that story came from, the impression conveyed that the Government are anxious to get some whole legislative programme through before the summer recess is absolute rubbish. It is a long time since any Government of this House approached the summer recess with less legislation on hands. In fact, the only legislation on hands is this loathsome piece of politically motivated legislation to try to assert some mean, vindictive party political policy.
We are totally opposed to this guillotine motion, just as we are opposed to the unworthy legislation which it hopes to implement. We propose to oppose both to the greatest extent possible which the Rules of Order and the Chair will permit, because we see them as unworthy of any Government.