What I would say to you is this; in the future, for example, there could be three or four TDs who could facilitate the formation of a Government. What the Deputy is now saying is that Independent TDs in the future attempting to facilitate the formation of a Government will have their rights diminished. That is the essence of the Opposition proposal.

Take Deputies McGrath and Nolan, for example, they are part of this group. They have voted against the Government three or four times already but the Deputy and others are taking it upon themselves to tell them they must be corralled in a certain part of the Dáil and can only be allowed to do A, B and C. That is unconstitutional. You have no right to do that. You have absolutely no right to do that and it is wrong.

Such hyperbole is really stretching it. The bottom line is this-----

------that three of the Opposition parties gain more time in terms of holding the Government to account. That is the factual position, as a result of 20 hours of discussions and so forth between the Chief Whip and the Whips of the other parties and also in terms of the committee on Dáil reform. That is the mechanism we have established in terms of the committee on Dáil Reform.

I say to the Deputy, from his perspective he is not losing any time.

You are not compared to the last Dáil, you are actually gaining time and that is the bottom line here.

This was raised earlier. If you compare Dáil Éireann to any other parliament in Europe, you will find the Opposition has more time than any other Opposition in any other parliament across Europe. Certainly in terms of Prime Ministers across Europe, no Prime Minister is in parliament more than the Irish Taoiseach is in Dáil Éireann. This can be checked out and looked at in terms of other parliaments across Europe. This proposal is proportionate because it is endeavouring to give backbench TDs of the Government parti…

-----with eight minutes on a Tuesday or on a Wednesday. All this row, about the dark days of Irish democracy, is about eight minutes extra on a Tuesday and eight minutes extra on a Wednesday-----

This apparently means we are on the brink of a terrible sort of negativity and so on.

Over the past ten years, there has been a consistent, incremental increase in time allocated to smaller groups within the Dáil and to Independents within the Dáil. There is a group on the far left that has about three or four Members with more speaking rights than other with 40 TDs or more.

That has been the reality over the past ten years.

There needs to be a degree of rebalancing.

Backbench Deputies need the opportunity to ask questions.

There is no big deal in that. It does not in any way-----

The big demand from members of the Opposition at the beginning, when we met with them, was not to lose any time. They have not lost any time.

The Opposition groups have actually gained time.

It is interesting. I made a fundamental point. When a general election happens, and the Deputy knows this because they have engaged with us at different times after different elections, Governments have to be formed.

There is the realpolitik of forming a government. Governments have to be formed.

Some people have no interest in forming a government. That is fair enough but others do. The programme for Government-----

The programme for Government is the document that binds the people who are going to support the Government together. Underlying all of this, and the Deputy said we could have brought this to an end, I actually do not believe the Opposition wants to bring this to an end.