Thursday sittings at Convention Centre
Deputy Matt Carthy objects to Thursday's business moving back to the Convention Centre, saying the House should remain in Leinster House. Deputy Mattie McGrath interjects that Sinn Féin is being hypocritical about the issue.
Not agreed.
We object to the sitting on Thursday moving back to the Convention Centre. It undermines the credibility of the House that we cannot come up with a solution that allows us to do our business here. As parents send their children on school buses and people go back to work in meat factories and other settings, the suggestion that we cannot come up with a working proposal that protects public health but allows us to do our business in this place is absolutely ludicrous. Today, the Government produced guidelines that will allow more people to sit in the Dáil bar than can sit in the Dáil Chamber. It is a crazy situation that needs to end and I call on the Business Committee to reconvene and come up with a workable solution that allows us to do our business in this House.
Comment on this
I had something else to raise but again this is hypocrisy from Sinn Féin. I proposed at the Business Committee meeting last Thursday, which the Ceann Comhairle chaired, that we would sit here every day and I got no seconder from Sinn Féin so this is grandstanding in the extreme. I was told by the party's representative that it might support me the next day. As the Ceann Comhairle knows, I have proposed at every Business Committee meeting that we do not sit in the Convention Centre because of the cost and all of the reasons outlined by Deputy Carthy. This is brass hypocrisy. Sinn Féin did not support it last week. It is shocking. I object to the business today and I ask again whether questions on promised legislation will be discussed at the meeting of the Business Committee this evening. Perhaps this evening Sinn Féin will support me when I ask that we move back here full time. I hope I will get another chance to do so at the meeting of the Business Committee.
Comment on this
Deputy McGrath is just making things up.