Before proceeding to questions on promised legislation, I want to call on the Government Chief Whip, being conscious of the request made yesterday to propose arrangements for the taking of statements on hospital waiting lists tomorrow.
Business of Dáil
I ask for leave to withdraw the arrangements proposed yesterday in regard to statements on the recent US executive order on immigration due to take place this Thursday morning. The statements have been substituted for statements on hospital waiting lists. It is proposed, notwithstanding previous orders of the Dáil this week, that: the Dáil shall sit at 9.30 a.m. to take the statements on hospital waiting lists; the statements shall be brought to a conclusion after two and a half hours; the speech of a Minister or Minister of State and the main spokespersons for parties or groups, or Members nominated in their stead, will have ten minutes each; a Minister or Minister of State will take questions for a period not exceeding 70 minutes; all Members may share time; and if the item is concluded before 12 noon, the House shall suspend until 12 noon, when Leaders' Questions shall commence.
Do Members have any comments on that?
I would like to raise my concerns about this arrangement. Obviously, I welcome that this debate is commencing and the length of the time allocated for it is fine but backbenchers like myself will be denied the right to contribute to it because there is no time provided for Fine Gael Members to contribute. Certainly there is time provided for the Minister, and that is right and proper but given that we have 50 Deputies in our party, we will not be able to make a contribution in the ten minutes the party will have to contribute. I respectfully ask that the committee-----
The Deputy's parliamentary party had an opportunity to raise that.
I did not interrupt anybody. I know the Deputy might not like what I am saying. The right of a backbencher to speak on a matter of utmost national importance is recognised by the committee organising the business of this House and it must allow me and people like me to speak in this important debate.
What is the Deputy's proposal?
My proposal is that the debate would commence earlier than 9.30 a.m., whether it be 8.30 a.m or 8 a.m., I do not mind, that it would continue until every Member of the House who wishes to speak on this biggest scandal about hospital waiting lists would speak and that we would have that right. That is what we are elected to do, that is what I am looking for and that is what my constituents want me to say.
With respect, Deputy, every Deputy has a right to speak on every matter that they might want to but-----
That is correct.
-----practicality requires us to order the business in the course of the working week.
Yes.
It is not realistic to expect that all 158 Members will have an opportunity to contribute on this or any other matter but-----
I am not suggesting that would be the case.
If the Deputy has a practical implementable proposal, I ask him please to put it.
I will repeat what I said. Notwithstanding the wisdom of the Ceann Comhairle's comments, the Labour Party, the Anti-Austerity Alliance, the Independents 4 Change, the Social Democrats and the Green Party are all smaller parties. That is a fact. Why can I as a Member of Fine Gael not speak for five minutes like any Member of the other parties? The point is-----
Has the Deputy a specific proposal?
My proposal is that we would ask, if it would be helpful-----
The Deputy wants the House to sit at 8.30 a.m. Is that what he is proposing?
I do not have a problem with that, or at 8 a.m. I have no problem with that. I propose that.
At 8 a.m., yes. Thank you, Deputy. Does any other Member wish to comment?
I want to put on the record that what the Deputy said about his party applies to this side of the House. The business that had been scheduled to be transacted at that time tomorrow had made additional time available for the three larger parties - there was an extra hour to be divided. That is not in the new arrangement and it makes it virtually impossible for the vast majority of Members from our party, the party opposite and a significant number of the Members of Sinn Féin to contribute. That needs to be examined.
I thought the Deputy's party was happy with-----
Ciúnas.
It is happening time and again that the vast majority of Members on this side and on the opposite side of the House do not have an opportunity to contribute. Yesterday's Order of Business was the first time that was acknowledged and an effort was made, but the revised business does not reflect that and it should return to that.
There was an opportunity. We met yesterday afternoon in the Business Committee, and every Whip from every party had the opportunity to state at that stage that the arrangement was not suitable. I have no problem with the time being extended. I was among those who argued it should be longer. There is no problem suspending the debate and continuing it thereafter. I agree that every Deputy in the House should be allowed time to speak, but we do not all have access to Ministers in the same way to those Deputies of whose party the Ministers are members. In this instance, the Deputies who have raised concerns about the arrangement did not raise those concerns at the meeting, which was the appropriate place. However, I do not have a problem with reflecting the arrangement we had decided for the statements on the executive order in the United States. There is no problem, but that impacts on the opportunity made available tomorrow for other Deputies other than party spokespersons to ask questions. If some of that time is taken away, it will impact on the ability of other Deputies to ask questions.
We can easily add an additional half hour which will allow for a second round from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil if that suits people.
Absolutely.
I was the Fine Gael representative at the Business Committee yesterday, and it probably was remiss of me not to be conscious of my own backbenchers, so I apologise. Could we perhaps revert to what we had previously agreed and add the second round in afterwards, if that would be-----
Yes.
There is a wider point. There is validity to what Deputies O'Dowd and Curran have said. Quite a number of Deputies for quite a long time have articulated that a d'Hondt mechanism is not in place for speaking times. I think I have raised this with the reform committee. My understanding was that the committee was meant to deal with this. I want to be reasonable about it, representing the 44 Deputies-----
And counting.
-----on our side of the House.
Mattie's ready.
(Interruptions).
It is a very serious point. What tends to happen is that in most of the set piece debates, be it on the European Council or any other matter, there might be five or six speakers, with ten or 15 minutes allocated to each, but the bulk of backbenchers in the larger parties are simply not getting opportunities to speak on important issues. The Dáil reform committee needs to deal with this. The system does not have to be strictly d'Hondt. I am not in the business of shutting down smaller parties or anything like that.
Just gobbling them up.
By any yardstick, what has been happening is not fair. There is not a fair allocation of time, and quite a large number of Deputies are being disenfranchised as a result, as are the people they represent. This is no one's intention. We need to change it, and there is a way of doing so, but political will across the House is needed to make sure that can become a reality. I cannot do everything, but the Dáil reform committee should get down to work and get it done.
You are very good. The Dáil reform committee did have regard-----
Yes. That is the point.
-----to the points Deputy Martin has raised. It did so by extending the rounds for these statements to provide for an extra opportunity for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I do not ever remember an occasion here on which all backbenchers in all parties had an opportunity to contribute on all matters. The problem with reform is that we can be great enthusiasts for it but sometimes when it begins to happen, we can be very nostalgic for how things were in the past.
It would seem that the larger parties in the Dáil are trying to unravel, on a very ad hoc basis, agreed Dáil reform that was argued and debated over a period of months. I do not mind listening to the issue of a second bite of the cherry, but what is happening is that, on an ad hoc basis, the larger parties are trying to get more and more speaking rights.
There are more of us.
For years smaller parties and Independents were squashed, and not one of the Deputies on the backbenches cared when members of smaller parties, who are elected on an equal basis to every single one of them, did not get a fair say in the Dáil.
Since when do two wrongs make a right?
The problem is that the two large parties are responsible for the health crisis and now their members will have more chances to speak on what they have caused for the past decade or so. The backbenchers generally have no interest in speaking in the Dáil, and it is quite amazing that they are now suddenly giving out.
(Interruptions).
The Deputy should not make that accusation against Members.
That is unfair to Deputy O'Dowd. The Deputy has, over decades, developed quite a reputation for speaking on health issues in the House.
Deputy Coppinger should withdraw that remark.
The Deputy was not a backbencher at the time. He was a Minister of State.
The Deputy should withdraw that remark as well.
We dealt with the specific issue at the Sub-Committee on Dáil Reform in the way the Ceann Comhairle said. There is no difficulty having a second round. That would be a good thing but there is now a new demand from Fianna Fáil for strict proportionality. In the previous Dáil, where the Government majority was very large, strict proportionality would have completely suppressed the views of the Opposition. That was not done and minorities got much more time than they were entitled to-----
Is that why the previous Government was able to deal with so much legislation?
That is the way it is. The reform proposals we have gone through in some great detail and teased out practically with a group of working people over several months should be allowed to be implemented. If people have suggestions, they should submit them to that committee rather than seeking to "upscuttle" arrangements on the floor of the House.
I would like Deputy Coppinger to correct the record because we had a motion last week on roads and she had no interest in speaking on it. She told me that here in the Chamber.
Please do not get into a tit-for-tat here.
We should come in here tomorrow at 7.30 a.m. Many patients have been waiting four years and will get up at 9 o'clock tonight in order to travel and be in hospital tomorrow at 5 a.m. That is what we are talking about and I suggest that we come in at 7.30 a.m. at the latest because the patients have been waiting for four and a half years. They would come in gladly.
No one has been waiting four and a half years.
I have no difficulty coming in at an earlier time tomorrow. I could not let the occasion pass without saying that it is a measure of the new politics that the two major parties already want to return to the old narrative and that they want to control that narrative. These are the very parties that caused the mess.
That is not fair.
The issue we are talking about is the scandalous situation relating to the health service. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael once again want to control the narrative and they can do absolutely nothing other than make empty statements rather than change the policy.
Deputy Connolly has made her point. Will she please resume her seat?
As chairman of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party, I wish to express my disgust with the comment from Deputy Coppinger and the aspersions she has cast on my colleagues.
Which one?
Deputies
All of them.
All of them.
I thank Deputy Heydon. The point is made.
It is a question of fairness. If any Deputies on the opposite side of the House have a difficulty with the mandate of the 50 elected representatives of Fine Gael, I would say they have a problem with democracy. Even beyond tomorrow's debate, there are members of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party who do not get an opportunity to speak as other parties have outlined. At times when a Minister speaks on behalf of Government, he or she will take a departmental-Government approach. Sometimes, the Fine Gael approach is different and our inability to be able clearly to express that is an affront to democracy. That is why this change needs to happen.
My heart is bleeding for them. Who is the Deputy? I have never heard him speak before.
He is chairman of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party.
We have just witnessed the fascism of the Left.
Do we have a proposal that 30 minutes be added to tomorrow’s business? It was proposed by Deputy O’Dowd. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Can we not make it an hour?
It is agreed that it will be 30 minutes.