An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

It is important to note that this is not normal. Some Senators have been in previous Oireachtais with me. I have been in three now. Some Senators are new but we need to note the kind of parliamentary action we are seeing, and the curtailing of parliamentary scrutiny we have seen. I refer to a situation where a Government brings 70 pages of its own amendments and then guillotines the debate after just two sessions. It cuts short the debate so that the vast majority of Government amendments will never be discussed. They were not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. They were not discussed in the Dáil and they are not going to be discussed here. The amendments that we bring - which the Government could bring, by the way - are not going to be discussed either. We are going to have a guillotine imposed on a massive Bill, which is going to be life or death for some people. It is not normal. I want those Senators who entered politics - I think most people enter it in this way - in good faith because they want to be public representatives and part of parliamentary democracy to say, "Please, start standing up for parliamentary democracy".

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19