THE OIREACHTAS debates and passes the annual Finance Bill to give legal effect to the tax proposals the Minister for Finance outlines in his Budget statement.
Today, the Seanad completes a brief 5½-hour discussion of this year's Bill which the President will sign into law shortly. The Finance Bill is, without question, one of the most important items of legislation in the parliamentary year. And yet the legislature gives it much less scrutiny than it merits, given its size and complexity.
The Finance Bill amounted to some 200 pages and 144 sections this year. As in more recent years, at every stage of the Bill's journey through the Dáil and Seanad, the measure was subject to a closure or time motion. This crude parliamentary procedure is used to curtail debate in order to hasten the passage of legislation. In the case of the Finance Bill, the Government set a limit on the time for discussion during the different stages of its passage into law.
At committee stage, where the detail of legislation is considered, such an inflexible curtailment of debate produces an unacceptable outcome. For where sections of the Bill are not reached before the time limit for their discussion expires, they are not discussed at all. And where sections are under consideration, they may be inadequately discussed. This year's legislative timetable ensured that the Finance Bill, which was published on January 29th, would pass all stages in the Dáil and Seanad with remarkable speed some six weeks later, thanks in large measure to the parliamentary guillotine.
A few decades ago, the use of the guillotine to curb debate on legislation was the exception rather than the rule. And rarely, if ever, was it applied to the enactment of the Finance Bill. Today, government by guillotine has become the rule rather than the exception - to the detriment of proper parliamentary scrutiny. Legislate in haste, repent at leisure. Certainly, it is time to question the manner in which major legislation, like the Finance Bill, is enacted by the Oireachtas. It is a matter that should concern the Opposition parties - as parliamentary watchdogs - much more than it does.
Admittedly, the Government does face time constraints in enacting the Finance Bill. But these cannot justify the means employed to pass such important legislation without time for proper parliamentary consideration. Under statute, the President must sign the Finance Bill within four months of Budget day. Nevertheless, that allows ample time for a much less structured debate in the Oireachtas than present and past governments have been willing to facilitate.
The guillotine was used in the British parliament in the 19th century as a device to defeat efforts by the Home Rule party to filibuster debates or to obstruct the passage of legislation. Ironically, the guillotine is now used much more frequently in the Dáil than at Westminster; and not as some exceptional measure of last resort but as a routine form of time management to advance a government's legislative programme. It is time the Oireachtas woke up and made an issue of its parliamentary emasculation.