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

We are not here just to give little announcements and speeches. We are meant to be doing to the job of legislators. At a time when democracy is under attack around the world, it is crucial that we do not let it be eroded. We had lectures yesterday about how sovereignty is there because we exercise sovereignty in the Parliament. I believe that but we are not being allowed to do it when we are not allowed to scrutinise legislation. It is very serious when we cut things short in this way. When we look at Hungary and the attempts that were made in Poland, or when we look across the water to the United States, everywhere we see that the chipping away of checks and balances in our parliamentary system is serious. Of course, we have a Bill that in itself is going to chip away and give very serious and, in some cases, quite draconian powers to new kinds of officials appointed in new ways and thereby erode some of the checks, balances and protections that are part of our international protection system. That is why the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, the human rights bodies and everybody else have been sending us their detailed work and scrutiny on how we can fix this legislation to make it any good. We are skipping past all of that. We have to ask questions about this slide.
If we have a Minister who will not give the respect to Parliament of even accounting for his decisions on the legislation, how are we going to be confident that the very serious powers being granted in this Bill are not going to be used in a manner that brings us towards authoritarianism? There is an architecture in that Bill which, if used wrongly, would facilitate authoritarian actions like we have seen around the world. We have to hope it will not be, but confidence has to be much lessened by the fact we are not even able to talk about the Bill fully. I propose the amendment and I urge that contact be made and pressure be coming to make sure the debate is adjourned and the Bill properly scrutinised.

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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