The Order of Business is No. 8d, motion re referral to joint committee of proposed approval by Dáil Éireann of the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund Regulations 2011; No. 18, Supplementary Estimates for Public Services — Votes 19, 20, 22, 25, 34 and 37, back from committee; No. 18a, Supplementary Estimates for Public Services — Vote 40, back from committee; No. a18b, motion re membership of committee——
Order of Business
Poor Tommy.
——and No. a4, Social Welfare Bill 2011 — Order for Second Stage and Second Stage.
It is proposed, notwithstanding anything in Standing Orders, that the Dáil shall sit later than 5.45 p.m. and adjourn not later than 9.30 p.m.; Nos. 8d, 18, 18a and a18b shall be decided without debate and any division demanded on Nos. 18 and 18a shall be taken forthwith; Private Members’ business which shall be No. 41, motion re European summit, shall be taken at the conclusion of No. a18b and shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion after three hours; the sitting shall be suspended at the conclusion of Private Members’ business for 30 minutes; topical issues shall be considered at 8.42 p.m.; and the Dáil shall sit tomorrow at 10.30 a.m. and adjourn not later than 3.30 p.m. and at 10.30 a.m. on that day there shall be an Order of Business within the meaning of Standing Order 26, subject to the proceedings comprehended by paragraphs 2 and 3 of that Standing Order, not exceeding 20 minutes.
There six proposals to be put to the House. Is the proposal that the Dáil shall sit later than 5.45 p.m. agreed to? Agreed.
Is the proposal for dealing with Nos. 18, 18a, a18b, motion re referral to select committees, Supplementary Estimates for public services and motion re membership of committee, without debate, agreed to?
On No. 34——
I am sorry, but the Deputy does not represent a party. I am just putting procedural issues. I will come back to the Deputy.
I wish to speak about No. 34. The matter is being dealt with now.
No, I will come back to that in a moment. It is not going through. This is only procedure. I will come back to put that motion in a minute.
Is Deputy Broughan allowed to speak?
Is the proposal for dealing with Private Members' business agreed to? Agreed. Is the proposal relating to the suspension of sitting agreed to? Agreed. Is the proposal for dealing with topical issues agreed to? Agreed. Is the proposal for the sitting and business of the Dáil tomorrow agreed to?
It is not agreed.
It is not agreed. I oppose the proposal but I will not call a vote on it because votes on the Order of Business become a device by the Government to stop backbenchers raising issues on the Order of Business.
That is correct.
That is not correct. It is a procedure.
It is correct.
Deputy Ó Cuív is entitled to call a vote if he so wishes.
I will——
The Deputy should hold on a moment. Let us be clear; if the Deputy wishes to change procedures, he must ask, through his representative on the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, to do so. Let us get the facts straight. This is a procedural issue. I am sorry for interrupting the Deputy. He should please proceed.
You are more than welcome, a Cheann Comhairle.
We are bludgeoning the Parliament to death.
The reality is that the Government will bludgeon the procedures, as they are, through, because they have a majority. We object to rushing the Social Welfare Bill through the Dáil. Many of the changes are only coming to light now. For example, I understand that there is a change to family income supplement, FIS, to the effect that if one's partner or spouse is a carer, one will lose €120 a week. There is another change which effectively increases the tax on small farmers to 85%.
Deputy Ó Cuív should not get excited. We are just dealing with procedure. The Deputy can deal with the content of the Bill later.
Now that Fine Gael has persuaded the Labour Party to row back on its outrageous policies on disability, perhaps if Fine Gael had extra time it could persuade the Labour Party to row back on some of its more outrageous proposals.
It is all the fault of Fianna Fáil.
It is very convoluted.
It is strange to think back to last year——
Backbenchers do not include the Minister of State, Deputy Paul Kehoe.
Deputy Ó Cuív should hold on a second. We are dealing with the sitting tomorrow. The Deputy should stick to the proposal.
——at what the Labour Party said. It would have been strange to believe last year that it would take Deputy Michael Noonan of Fine Gael to give the Labour Party a conscience.
The Deputy is not allowed to say that.
That does not include the Minister of State, Deputy Paul Kehoe.
I also oppose No. 6, which is about shoving through the Social Welfare Bill as quickly as possible. All Stages are ordered for completion tomorrow. That is simply unacceptable. The Tánaiste knows that. If he were still on this side of the House he would oppose the guillotining of the Social Welfare Bill and the order that is proposed today. The Social Welfare Bill contains nearly all of the U-turns the Labour Party has made. It is the nastiest of all of the cuts we have seen in the budget.
I thank Deputy Doherty.
I am trying to be generous to the Labour Party because I know that it will need a great deal of time——
I am sorry, but we are not debating the issue.
——to explain the U-turns to the public. I will push the proposal to a vote because this is most important and it will affect so many people that there must be a vote to stop the ramming through of the Social Welfare Bill in the way proposed by the Government.
I also object strongly to the proposal. We have spent days, sometimes two weeks, debating Bills that had less significance than the Social Welfare Bill, which contains measures that will seriously hurt some of the most vulnerable sectors in society. It is outrageous in that context that the Bill should be rammed through in such a short period.
The Tánaiste has rightly backed off on the scandalous move to take away disability allowances from young people——
Thank you, Deputy Boyd Barrett. We will not debate the issue now.
Just a moment, a Cheann Comhairle. It is about the reason——
We are making arrangements.
It is about the reason for the arrangements.
No, we do not debate the issue.
It is about the arrangements, a Cheann Comhairle. The Tánaiste did that because he considered the wider implications of the attack.
The Deputy is straying into debate.
Could I also ask the Tánaiste to consider the request——
Deputy Boyd Barrett can do that when he is speaking in the debate.
——to extend the time for debating the Bill on the grounds that the drastic reduction in the income disregard for lone parents, which is a direct disincentive to work for young women, makes a mockery of his commitment to jobs in the programme for national government?
Thank you, Deputy Boyd Barrett. I will allow you to make all those points in the debate on the Social Welfare Bill.
The Tánaiste should reconsider that and allow us proper time to debate the issue.
It is a bit rich of Deputy Ó Cuív to argue about the amount of time that is available for the Social Welfare Bill this year.
It is hypocrisy on the Tánaiste's part.
When Deputy Ó Cuív was no less than Minister for Social Protection himself this time last year, a total of seven hours was provided over two days for the debate on the Social Welfare Bill. The amount that is being provided for this year is 50% more than that.
There is one big difference; we announced everything in the budget but the Government held back on many of the changes. They are hidden in the small print. We were up front but you are not.
Members should speak through the Chair please.
Second, the total amount of reductions in the social welfare budget this year is €190 million less than what the previous Government had pencilled in for 2012.
The Government managed to hit people for hundreds of euro. That is something we did not do last year.
I am sorry, but Deputy Ó Cuív should not interrupt.
The Deputy is wrong on two counts. There is an Order of Business. The proposal is that the House sit tomorrow to deal with the Social Welfare Bill. There is an Order of Business tomorrow. No guillotine is provided for the Social Welfare Bill today. In effect, what the Deputies are arguing for, perversely, is that there would not be a sitting of the Dáil tomorrow to deal with the Social Welfare Bill.
No, we are not arguing for that. That is rubbish.
The proposal is that there be a sitting of the Dáil tomorrow.
(Interruptions).
Members should read the proposal; it is that the Dáil shall sit tomorrow. That is what the Members opposite oppose. Do they want to finish the Bill today? That would be the effect of their vote; that there would be even less time to debate the Social Welfare Bill.
A Cheann Comhairle——
Deputy Ó Cuív should sit down.
On a point of order——
We object because the Dáil is adjourning tomorrow at 3.30 p.m. when it could continue until 10.30 p.m. or midnight.
Will Deputy Ó Cuív please sit down?
What we oppose is the Government cutting short the debate.
Deputy Ó Cuív should please resume his seat.
The Tánaiste should not try to twist it.
Deputy Ó Cuív should please have some respect for the House.
I have plenty of respect for the House.
Then he should not jump up and down like a yo-yo.
I was making a point of order to clarify the position.
I am putting the question.
Question put: "That the proposals for dealing with tomorrow's business be agreed to."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 84; Níl, 39.
Tá
- Barry, Tom.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Bruton, Richard.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Collins, Áine.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Conway, Ciara.
- Corcoran Kennedy, Marcella.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Creed, Michael.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Fitzgerald, Frances.
- Fitzpatrick, Peter.
- Flanagan, Charles.
- Flanagan, Terence.
- Gilmore, Eamon.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Hannigan, Dominic.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Harris, Simon.
- Hayes, Tom.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keaveney, Colm.
- Kehoe, Paul.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lynch, Ciarán.
- Lyons, John.
- McCarthy, Michael.
- McEntee, Shane.
- McFadden, Nicky.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mathews, Peter.
- Mitchell, Olivia.
- Mitchell O’Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Nash, Gerald.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Neville, Dan.
- Nolan, Derek.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O’Donnell, Kieran.
- O’Donovan, Patrick.
- O’Dowd, Fergus.
- O’Mahony, John.
- O’Reilly, Joe.
- O’Sullivan, Jan.
- Penrose, Willie.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Phelan, John Paul.
- Reilly, James.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Brendan.
- Sherlock, Sean.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Stanton, David.
- Timmins, Billy.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Twomey, Liam.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Wall, Jack.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Níl
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Browne, John.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Collins, Joan.
- Collins, Niall.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Daly, Clare.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Flanagan, Luke ‘Ming’.
- Fleming, Tom.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Halligan, John.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kitt, Michael P.
- Mac Lochlainn, Pádraig.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon
- Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- O’Brien, Jonathan.
- O’Dea, Willie.
- O’Sullivan, Maureen.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Ross, Shane.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Wallace, Mick.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies John Lyons and Paul Kehoe; Níl, Deputies Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Seán Ó Fearghaíl.
Question declared carried.
We will move on to No. 8d, motion re referral to joint committee of proposed approval by Dáil Éireann of the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund Regulations 2011.
Is there to be no Order of Business?
No, the time has expired. I call on the Minister to move the motion.
I want to protest.
The Deputy cannot protest, as we are about to move the motion.
I protest that, because the time was taken up for a vote, there will be no Order of Business. We will be looking for an agreement that time taken up for a vote not be counted. We will take up the matter formally at the Committee on Procedure and Privileges and presume there will be all-party agreement on what is a curtailment of democratic rights in the Dáil. When the Government promised reform——
I ask the Deputy to resume his seat.