Government accused of 'running away' from responsibility

FIANNA FÁIL and the Green Party were accused of “running away” from responsibility and the electorate in voting for a 12-week recess, the longest summer break for the Dáil since 2003.

However, during rowdy scenes and repeated interventions, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan defended closing down plenary sessions of the House for three months, and said deputies were justified in “taking at least two weeks off”.

She also rejected a Labour Party call that the Dáil return for one day early in September to introduce legislation for the holding of a referendum on children’s rights and to move the writ for three byelection vacancies.

A vote was taken on the recess, which the Government won by 74 to 68 votes.

The Dáil will reconvene at 2.30pm on September 29th.

Fine Gael deputy leader Dr James Reilly, standing in for party leader Enda Kenny, said the Government “wants to run away” and “it’s entirely out of order for the House to rise for three months in the face of an economic crisis and huge and unprecedented unemployment”.

Michael Ring (FG, Mayo) shouted at the Government that “if you had your way you’d close it down ’til Christmas. Will we be back for Christmas Eve, do you think?”

Dr Reilly said people were “outraged and aghast at what is happening. They cannot fathom how the House can be so detached from the realities of the lives of ordinary people”.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the Fianna Fáil and Green Party proposal was exceptional “even by the standards of this Government”, and 2003 was the last time the Dáil returned so late. He asked the Government to reconvene the Dáil for one day at the beginning of September to introduce a Bill for the referendum on children’s rights and to move the writ for the three byelections. The Government had said it did not want to interrupt Dáil business by holding the byelections but “it can now hold them in September” while the Dáil was in recess.

Mr Gilmore said the three months’ recess was “not about holidays but about politics”.

“The reason the Government is doing this is that it will have three months in which it will not run the risk of being defeated in a vote in this House”.

Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin told the Government “we don’t want you back”. They wanted instead a “dissolution of this Dáil”. He said “the problem is not the length of time the Dáil will go into recess for the summer, but the Government that holds office over the State”.

The Tánaiste said it was an “injustice” to every TD that in deciding the recess “we create a presumption in the public mind that members of this House will not be working when in fact each member of this House will be working during July, part of August and September”.

The recess was appropriate “to allow time for every member of this House to take a justifiable occasion of at least two weeks off”.