I want to say two things by way of preliminary observation. We are on Report Stage of a Bill which runs to 299 sections at present. The debate on the Bill in Dáil Éireann was guillotined. It was then brought to this House by the Government in circumstances where it requires further extensive amendment.
Members of this House might be interested to know that the guillotine that was used on Committee Stage in this House had the effect of making a further 188 amendments to the Bill, some of them involving new sections and some involving small changes. On Thursday last, the Committee Stage debate on the Bill was guillotined. On Friday, the Bills Office commenced the noble task of putting together an administrative reprint of this lengthy Bill. That became available later on Friday, which meant that Members of this House were in a position to table Report Stage amendments in an orderly fashion.
We would not have been able to do so at all if we did not know the layout of the Bill as amended by the Government guillotine.
The next thing that happened is that the Government fixed today for Report Stage, and the consequence of that was that any amendments Members wanted to table on Report Stage had to be before the Bills Office by 11 a.m. on Monday morning. We had from Friday at lunchtime, when we received this administrative reprint, to Monday at 11 a.m. to table amendments for Report Stage. When all the amendments were put out, the Bills Office then had to make head or tail of who was seeking to further amend this Bill on Report Stage. It transpires that the Government, not satisfied with the 188 amendments it made last week, is tendering a further 123 amendments, by my count, today. That is extraordinary. It claims this is needed to meet a deadline. It is not, by the way; there would be no effect if this was only enacted in July. Nobody in Europe would even blink if that happened. We are supposed to do it by a date in June.
In any event, what has happened is that the Government has fixed the Order of Business of this House today, again with the guillotine, which says that if its 123 amendments are not reached, they are deemed to have been considered and passed by this House. Let us remember that this is a Bill that was guillotined through Dáil Éireann and will have 300 amendments made in the passage of one week through this House. None of our amendments to a Bill from the Dáil take effect, as the Bills Office reminds us, unless they are accepted by Dáil Éireann. When it comes back to Dáil Éireann, and with no disrespect to the Members of that Chamber, it will look as if these 300 amendments received some consideration in this House. They will not have received it. I remember so many times when Ministers said the guillotine was not going to be used, or used only sparingly and in circumstances of emergency. We now find ourselves in a grotesque situation where 300 Government amendments, the vast majority of which will not have been considered by this House, will have been passed and will arrive back in Dáil Éireann and the Bill will probably be guillotined there as well, without proper consideration. That is a contemptuous way to deal with any Legislature. On a matter of the importance of this Bill, which is incorporating into Irish law the ill-named migration pact of the European Union, it is a sad reflection that that is where we are.
As to the exact wording of the Report Stage amendment I have moved, I bring to the House's attention that Standing Order No. 179 provides as follows:
Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library.
That is not just this Chamber; that provision is mirrored in the Standing Orders of Dáil Éireann. Seanad Standing Order No. 179 mirrors exactly Standing Order No. 204 of the Dáil, which provides:
Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library.
If a Minister of the Government tenders any Bill to the Houses of the Oireachtas, unless it is the Finance Bill or the Appropriation Bill, he or she is obliged by the rules of the Oireachtas, adopted separately by each House, to report in one year on the implementation of the Act. In my experience, this is never done. We have, on occasion, included provisions in an Act that it should be reviewed after three years or whatever, but we have never insisted as a matter of basic discipline laid down by the two Houses of the Oireachtas that we get a report in respect of every Bill, except either of those two finance measures, saying how it was implemented and that it has to be done within 12 months of the date of its enactment.
Once this Bill goes through the second guillotine - it must be the most beheaded Bill of all time - gets to the Áras an Uachtarán and is signed into law, which I presume it will be, unless it goes to the Supreme Court in the next number of weeks, the clock will ticking on the Department of justice and every Department to get ready and diary in that in one year's time it will report to both Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann as to how the Bill has been implemented. That is the law of the land that is laid down in the procedures of the Oireachtas. It is as binding on a Minister or Department as any other procedure in this House.
It is strange that that is practically unknown as a provision. If it is unknown in this House that that provision exists - when I discovered it, I was a little bit surprised, I have to say – it is no surprise at all that it is ignored all the time by Government. We frequently see amendments being put down asking for such reports on implementation to be tabled and the Government, in each case, defeating such amendments when in fact it is a basic rule and a basic part of the discipline of our Parliament that that reporting process is complied with. What I want to see is that if this Bill becomes law in the next few weeks, one way or another, we will be told in a year's time exactly how it has worked. Was there a detention centre established? How many unaccompanied minors had been affected by it? How many people had been subject to the border procedure during that year and the like? We in this House are not entitled to put down parliamentary questions like Members of Dáil Éireann are, requiring that kind of information as of right, but we are entitled, by the rules of both Houses, to that information to see precisely what effect the measures that have been enacted have had in the year following their enactment.
I will say something. This is not just for the Department of justice today. It is for every Department, member of the Government and Minister of State who has functions under legislation. They must account to the Houses one year after they get the law changed for how it is operating as a matter of obligation to the Houses. That is the law of our land and those are the procedures laid down in the Standing Orders of both Houses. Some people may say that is not in statute form but is only in the Standing Orders of the Houses. To that I say that if one tenders a Bill as a member of Government to either House and gets it passed by both Houses, one is doing so on the solemn undertaking and understanding that, one year after its exactment, one will present a report to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas in the parliamentary library, as per Standing Orders, stating precisely how the legislation in question has been implemented. It is not a little frill on top of legislation or an obligation that can be dismissed or ignored, as it has been routinely in the past. Rather, it is an obligation that is a solemn duty on the part of the Minister. It does not apply solely to this Bill because it has controversial provisions. It applies to everything.
I will give the Minister an example. We in this House legislated to make it a criminal offence to pay for sex. We changed the law in order to do that. Whether that was wise, I do not know, but it was done. There was a review process in the legislation, but everyone seems to have ignored the fact that, under that legislation, we were entitled to a report under our own rules of procedure. It is in that spirit that I am tendering this amendment. Does the Government accept it is bound by those Standing Orders or does it not? It is habitually not complying with them. In fact, it is ignoring the obligations under those Standing Orders to either House habitually.
Other Members of the House have put down amendments seeking particular reports on the operation of the Bill in particular regards. This and the other amendment in the group have that effect. The amendment in my name, seconded by Senator Craughwell, is there to insist on our entitlements, namely, that there will be a report one year after the Bill becomes law, if it does, and that the House will be aware of all of the relevant aspects of its operation and will be informed as to the result of its enactment, even if subject to the guillotine.
Last week, 188 amendments were carried, mainly by guillotine. Some 122 Government amendments will be carried this afternoon by the guillotine process. The vast majority of amendments will never have been considered by the House. If a guillotine is imposed in Dáil Éireann, they will never be considered there at all. The courts and President, in considering an Article 26 reference, will assume that this is the will of the Oireachtas. How can the Oireachtas will things to be the law if they are rushed through in the manner I have described and the great majority of Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas have never had the opportunity to even ask a question about any of the amendments that the Government proposes to make to its own Bill? I am only allowed to speak once on the amendment, but I can reply at the end of the debate.
I am serious about this. There has to be a new approach to accountability to the Houses. It is in the Standing Orders of both Houses. This is not the Seanad becoming uppity; it is part of the legislative process. We, as Members of the Oireachtas, must insist on compliance with our own rules, especially when we are confronted with a multiple guillotining in both Houses that is giving rise to the vast majority of 300 amendments never being considered by either House.
