Before the Deputy moves the Adjournment, I move that the Dáil sit after 8.30 p.m. We have a considerable amount of financial business to transact, and it may be necessary to sit beyond 8.30.
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - HOUR OF ADJOURNMENT.
Would it not be strange to take that before the motion for the Adjournment? If the motion for Adjournment happened to be carried, it would settle the other one.
There is no catastrophe in that.
Before you put the motion, might I ask what business is to be taken, and how late are we likely to sit? Are we to get through all the financial business, and are we also to take the motion as to the Housing of the Oireachtas? I think it would facilitate us if the President stated how much business is to be proceeded with.
The whole of the financial business, and the Supplementary Estimates, if we have to sit beyond 8.30 p.m.
If it is intended that we should take the whole of the financial business, then I think the motion should not be accepted by the Dáil. We have about 20 Resolutions, some of which deal with very important matters, that may be very controversial. If the motion of the President is that we should sit until these Resolutions have been decided, well we may be sitting a very long time. This procedure of bringing a motion for closure to deal with Estimates on this kind of notice is, to say the least of it, not at all fair to the Dáil. If the Minister intends that this shall be a motion to rush through and vote down at all costs, no matter what the arguments may be, these 20 Resolutions then, I think, I can promise he will have to sit and will have to keep his House.
Is the Vote on Account to be taken as well?
Yes.
That is another 60 in addition.
The Vote on Account is really less a matter for discussion, in the ordinary way at any rate, than the Supplementary Estimates. The fact of the matter is that somehow or other we must contrive to get the Supplementary Estimates, the Vote on Account and the various Resolutions on the Central Fund Bill through by to-morrow night.
We shall be here till to-morrow night.
The motion is moved under Standing Order 16 "That the Dáil sit later than 8.30 p.m. this evening."
I have no objection to the motion, but I have an objection to the explanation and the reason given in reply to Deputy Cooper, not that it was necessary to sit late but that it was necessary to get all the financial business through before we rose.
That is not the intention. All the financial business must be through by to-morrow night. I would not say that it is necessary to get the whole of it through to-day, but that the whole time of the Dáil should be devoted to financial business.
That is a very different story.
Question put and agreed to.