A sudden flood of Bills increases election speculation

There’s so much activity in Leinster House you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s an election in the offing.

The usual pre-Christmas rush to get legislation through has intensified, with Bills being done and dusted in a few hours.

In fact, there’s such an avalanche of legislation this week and next it has created renewed speculation the Dáil will not be back in January.

It’s that November vs spring election hype all over again. This time it’s whether the big day is at the end of January or in mid- or late February.

The Taoiseach reassured restive TDs this week that the Dáil would be back in January, but it didn’t stop speculation.

And in the meantime some Bills are getting just a few hours’ scrutiny, whereas others took four years.

There is so much business to get through in the next few days that after taking 10 minutes just to read the list, Tánaiste Joan Burton said, “I think I’ll sit down now and take a rest.”

But when Independent Michael Fitzmaurice started talking about the impact of the floods and the lack of long-term action, some were coming to the view the Government might be best advised to wait until the damage was repaired before asking people for their votes.

How come, he asked, “Holland is below sea level and is not drowned out of it?”

This country, he said, “appears to be the greatest country in the world for telling people how they cannot do something”.

“The Shannon, Suck and most rivers in this country are blocked with silt.” he said. But whenever anyone tried to do something, like dredging their part of the river, “five different bodies try to put obstacles before them”.

‘Biggest villain’

But whatever about the EU, the National Parks and Wildlife Service “is the biggest villain of them all”, he thundered.

Last year a Galway road was flooded and the road was opened and closed five times. “In the end the gardaí had to intervene because one arm of the State was blocking another.”

After floods two years ago in England, “they took the bull by the horns” and started dredging rivers. People would do it in their own area.

“Will the Government overrule EU bureaucracy and the bullshit that’s coming from it?” he asked, claiming consultants were costing more than the required repair works.

But the Tánaiste said people involved in fishing and tourism mightn’t support his view that the rivers in Ireland “should simply be gouged out”.

But he said dredging would work in most areas.

She told him Ireland was now experiencing 20-year weather events every five years. People had to make a living, “not just from farming but also from tourism”.

Not much tourism in the west these days.