Gnó na Dála - Business of Dáil
Dail Éireann — 2020-07-30
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Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

Day in and day out they bully people in the Chamber because they come from a larger party or a Government party. I want the people at home tonight and the people who will listen to this on the radio tomorrow morning to know that what we have here is a new set of procedures, which will still give the Opposition parties 74% of the speaking time, even though they have less than half the seats. If there is anyone who should be complaining, it is the Government parties. We have more than half of the votes, we have more than half of the seats and we are only getting about 25% of the speaking time. They are getting a disproportionate share of the speaking time. We are the ones who should be grandstanding, not them. In terms of the order in which people speak, surely it makes sense that the largest parties that got hundreds of thousands of votes, should come in before those that got one, two or three percent. Surely that is fairness and democracy and that is all we are trying to restore here.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-07-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-30