Making a farce of Dáil?
Squabbling between Ross and Healy-Reas is stalling Bills... Now Tánaiste says: Stop all this filibustering
TÁNAISTE Simon Coveney has warned that the ongoing filibustering of the Road Traffic Bill on drink-driving is at risk of making a ‘farce’ of the Dáil.
He was responding to the increasing frustration among TDs over the objections to the new laws, which are also delaying other Bills from being dealt with.
Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin told the Dáil last week that there were three other Bills in their final stages which were scheduled for debate but ‘not reached’ due to the ongoing and controversial debate on Transport Minister Shane Ross’s Road Traffic Bill.
He asked for those other Bills to be rescheduled and placed before others that ‘might be likely to attract debate’.
In response, the Tánaiste said: ‘On the ongoing saga of the Road Traffic Bill, I do think those members of this House who are filibustering on that Bill should reflect on the impact their tactics are having on other important legislation which is being delayed.
‘I do not want to start pointing the finger at people, but if we continue to behave like this we are going to make a farce of this House,’ he added.
In a previously unreported response last Thursday, Independent Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae, who is a vocal critic of Minister Ross’s Bill, again denied that he or his colleagues are tactically delaying the Bill by filibustering.
He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘We are entitled to talk and raise issues. Wherever they got this fancy word “filibustering”, that’s not what we are doing.’ He said they were simply highlighting the problems this Bill is going to have and ‘the adverse affect it is going to have on rural people, young and old’.
Mr Healy-Rae said Minister Ross is the cause of the delay himself, as he ‘changed it [the Bill], added bits on to it and as a result of that the Bill had to be recommitted, and that’s what took all the time’.
The Bill puts forward a number of proposals, including an automatic driving ban on firsttime drink-driving offenders. Currently, first-time offenders receive a fine and penalty points.
But the proposals have been met by strong opposition and anger among rural politicians.
The row deepened recently, after Mr Healy-Rae said he was seeking legal advice after being branded a ‘road traffic terrorist’ by Mr Ross.
And in a recent exchange of words between Mattie McGrath TD, who is also opposed to the Bill, and the minister, at an Oireachtas committee meeting, Mr McGrath claimed Mr Ross would have ‘all the rural dwellers locked up at night’ if he could.
In a bid to tackle rural isolation, the minister recently introduced a pilot late-night bus service in rural Ireland, which will initially operate on 50 routes from 6pm to 11pm. Meanwhile, at a road safety event in May, Minister Ross singled out the Healy-Rae brothers – Danny and Michael – and appealed to them to stop filibustering.
‘I’ll take this opportunity to appeal to Danny Healy-Rae and his gang to stop the filibuster,’ he said. ‘They are behaving like road traffic terrorists. There is a kind of guerilla warfare going on that is costing lives.’
In response, Mr Healy-Rae raised the minister’s comments during a
‘Why am I being called a terrorist?’
debate on the Bill and demanded an apology.
‘I don’t understand why I am being called a terrorist,’ the Co. Kerry TD said.
‘I have to say to you, Minister, that I have a family at home as well and I don’t think you or anyone in here or outside, or anywhere, would like to be called a terrorist.’
He added: ‘I will be dealing with that in another fashion and I have sought legal advice.’