We have to.

It is a slipshod way of getting-----

We would love to agree the motion, but it is a slipshod effort by the Government to allow its backbenchers to go around to all the hotels and tell them they support them.

That is the reason we are not supporting it.

We are not accepting it. We have to vote against our own motion, which is ridiculous. It is exposing the Government.

More baloney and trickery by the Government.

On a day when Áine Donnelly, a former garda, and her former Garda colleagues are visiting the Dáil, many of them of the rank of inspector or superintendent, I wish to speak on behalf of the gardaí of Clonmel in south Tipperary. The Garda station in Clonmel is Dickensian, with no sign of it going to tender. We also have the worst numbers ever in Clonmel. Carrick-on-Suir has three gardaí and two sergeants when it used to have 14 gardaí. It is the same in Cahir and Cashel districts and in Tipperary town. When are we g…

The Government is telling us it will.

Of course it was curtailed.

It was a charade, with NGOs-----

On a point of order-----

The Deputy has been addressing me for minutes but I did not hear the first part of his address because I was talking to the Ceann Comhairle's good self. I stood up to ask for clarification because I had not realised the Deputy was addressing me. The debate was a charade. There was a line of NGOs telling us what they wanted us to hear, and NGOs are running the country, so it was a pure charade and this is a further charade.

You should have got a drone.

It is questionable-----

Yes, I am. This is the trick. It is a trick of the loop because I honestly believe the Government might be short of numbers tonight and it is afraid to hold a vote. There was no consultation with the Whips - not with me anyway.

Of course I want more time because it is a very serious issue. I want a referendum but it is being played around with. It was buried for three weeks during the elections to get the next one over and fool the people and now the Government is trying to fool all of us here too.

On a point of order-----

Because the Government is playing games, yes.

I have been here all evening and have annoyed the clerks by asking how many more speakers there are. Why are they not on the list? We are always told our names have to be on the list to speak. It looks like a charade, walks like a charade and is a charade. Nothing short of it.

It is a game.