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FIANNA FÁIL has accused James Reilly of trying to ‘rig’ speaking time during today’s session of ministerial questions in the Dáil, in order to minimise the time he can spend answering opposition questions.
The party’s health spokesman Billy Kelleher believes Fine Gael backbenchers have deliberately flooded the minister with written questions to be answered when Reilly takes to the Dáil today for his regular question-and-answer session.
Kelleher says the move means the 75 minutes allotted for questions is skewed so that fewer opposition questions can be dealt with.
Dáil rules mean that five questions put to each minister are nominated as ‘priority questions’, and are deliberately taken first so that the TD putting the question has a chance to ask a follow-up question or seek supplementary information.
After that, however, the order of questions is chosen by a lottery – with today’s lottery meaning five of the next seven questions from Fine Gael backbenchers asking about the progress made in eliminating waiting lists or MRSA in their various local hospitals.
In a typical session of oral questions, the minister will only have time to answer their five priority questions and between three to five others. Questions which do not get an oral answer in the time allotted are answered in writing, reducing the opportunity for a follow-up inquiry.
The number of questions submitted by TDs for Reilly’s five-weekly session of oral questions has ballooned in recent months.
170 questions have been tabled for today’s session, which begins at 2:30pm. 112 had been tabled for Reilly’s last batch, on February 14, while the previous sessions in September and November had 71 and 86 questions respectively.
Around half of the 170 questions for today’s session relate to the removal of waiting lists or MRSA infection rates in various hospitals, and are tabled by Fine Gael backbenchers.
In some cases, TDs have asked for updates on hospitals outside of their own constituencies, in cases where their own constituency hospital is covered by a colleague’s question.
For example, Clare TD Joe Carey has asked about the reduction in the number of patients on trolleys at Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Ennis – leaving his constituency colleague Pat Breen to instead ask about inpatient waiting lists for children at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth.
Louth’s local backbencher, Peter Fitzpatrick, has asked separate questions about adult inpatient and day care waiting lists and trolley numbers in the same hospital, and about waiting lists at the separate Louth County Hospital in Dundalk.
“A TD can only submit a maximum of two oral questions which means that Fine Gael, with more than 50 backbenchers, is in a position to submit such a volume of questions as they have done today,” Kelleher claimed.
“While it is not without precedent for a small number of government backbenchers to be encouraged to submit a question, for more than 85 to be submitted is notable to say the least.”
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FG … Changing the way we conduct our democracy .. As promised at election time.
There can be nothing more cynical and devious as hiding behind and manipulation of traditional formats of procedure to evade transparency and take responsibility.
FF or FG only difference is the last letter.
When would it be an appropriate time for Minister O’Reilly to give a progress report
on the debt he was brought to court over.
In my opinion one of the reasons they sit across each other in the Dáil is One party is the mirror image of the other
9 celts. what has that got to do with the Article. Refocus. Or stop smoking weed.
Fg. getting the country back on its knees
The Dail is a circus. Try watching it for 10 minutes without throwing something at the Tv.
The whole system is rotten and antiquated and needs to be changed but sure you know that the turkeys wont vote for Christmas! ever!
Its good to see the FG. backbenchers finding their voice where have they been for the last two years when Kenny and co. were robbing the poor, children, OAP. and the Disabled, maybe now they have found their voice they might speak up for the people that elected them.
Or they found their voice to stop J Reilly facing annoying questions.I know which is the most likely, do you?
@William – FG backbenchers “finding their voice”? Oh please. More like abusing their position to ensure a minimum of Government accountability to the Dáil.
PQs are mostly just meaningless posturing, on both sides of the house. The real test of conviction comes at voting time, when all but a handful of these pathetic backbenchers will continue to support the Government come hell or high water.
William I’m sorry to disagree but the only voice I hear from the backbenchers is the heckling that goes on during Dáil when Taoiseach is caught with a question he can’t or won’t answer
@ Sean Duke FG backbenchers aren’t trying to hold Reilly to account. They are trying to flood question time with innocuous questions so that no-body can hold him to account.
have they heard of the word “heave” ?
I agree with John: the Dáil system is an antiquated shambles not fit for purpose, but nothing will change.
Can fianna fail ever just f**k off!
I’m not an FF supporter. Say what you like about them and their past but they are democratically elected representatives and are entitled to speak in our national parliament and represent the people who elected them. And that goes for all parties, regardless of their history.
Fight them on their views, policies and/or opinions but just wishing they’d just “fu<k off" is a little simple.
Ah poor Billy, now he knows how his party leaders, Bertie & Biffo Cowan treated Dail time for 14years!
Yes two wrongs make a right.Good old Ireland they done it so i can too.
So much for that reform of politics we were promised by Enda.
*Cowen
Lets all adjourn to the dail bar I hear the crack is 90 there, the oireachtas is just a public political sound bite session for attention seeking a’holes on huge salaries and expense accounts. What a joke
Its like a wrestling match on tv both groups appear to hate each when the cameras are rolling,but behind closed doors they’re all buddies.
Questions: there’s only 75 questions on trolley’s at the moment, we hope to have beds for these in the next 48 hours.. the remaining 25 are pretty old so who cares if these are discarded , Yours truly
Minister
James Reilly
FF prob used this trick many times while they were in power to avoid answering questions fully. FF FG either party-same outcome. These parties are no good and would sell us out in the morning all over again like they did carrying on the legacy of FF on the late night IBRC legislation. Lets not be made fools of twice. We deserve better than that.
Turlough, people shouldn’t have to be press ganged into public service. There is nothing to stop more women joining political parties or putting themselves forward for election. Let’s look at the Meath East. By-election. 11 candidates, one woman. The one woman in contention is only there because of who her father was. No disrespect to Helen McEntee but she was chosen because of family connections, her gender is merely convenient to her party. I don’t see how increases female participation will reduce the ‘turkeys’? They will simply choose female ‘turkeys’ from the party gene pool. Why can male td’s not represent a woman’s views? I think political parties can bring whatever rules in they want for themselves, but legislating for the rest of us and binding any future party to 30% female candidates or only half the party finding is discrimination.
Once a bully always one
Just because Fianna Fáil backbenchers are happy to sit quietly behind their Minister when they’re in government? It’s a welcome development that this government’s backbenchers are interested in holding the government to account.
You didn’t read the article so?How questions need to be asked about MRSA levels in our hospitals?.The number in the article seems a little excessive in my opinion.
Also a government backbencher holding the government to account how does that work?I’ve seen no evidence of this,with only 5 exceptions they all vote the party line.
@Dean Duke…. Hahahahahaha, nomination for satirical comment of the week, you absolutely cracked me up, fair play to you. Great lad.
Good to see FG have mastered FF’s “Government unaccountability 101″ course, NOT.
How much did the bill the tax payers for that course?
FF bankrupted this economy. They cannot accuse anybody of anything
but look at all the motorways.public transport they build in goverment.they gave us extra tax credits when they could.gave more to welfare in there time.then arse fell out of the celtic tiger.and f.g got in and cut the peoples throats with there taxes and more taxes
Which public transport did FF build?
They didn’t really put themselves out. Plenty of roads to nowhere that weren’t really needed, but public transport…..
Pot, kettle and black all come to mind.
How did this become about gender quotas in the Dail? Maybe people reject these discriminatory quotas because they believe in fairness? How would gender quotas in the dail political parties make any difference to back benchers purposefully wasting this question time?
Conor, Does women never holding more than 13% of seats sound fair and representative to you? Does the same old fogey’s from the same old professions holding 90% of seats ad infinitum sound fair? Forcing turkeys to allow other species and genders into politics…..is only discriminatory to male turkeys right? Surely that’s what people really want ? A more representative parliament? Forcing political parties to recruit and attract females means that they have to remove barriers that prohibit this. These same barriers also stop men from all professions but the chosen few and crucially it stops men who may have some interest in child rearing.
A greater pool of talent to draw from should bring greater talent and integrity to the fore. Having a different type of TD increases the liklihood of incidents like thsoe described in this article becoming a thing of the past. We are talking here about almost all of back bench TDs in FG demonstrating a lack of integrity in this action.
BTW If you still think getting Turkeys out is discriminatory, then please explain if you are for or against the current geographical quotas which you must also regard as “discriminatory” on principle?
The problem isn’t that we vote the same Turkeys in.
The problem is that any variation of the selection of candidates we get to choose from will produce more or less these predictable results. Our Candidates and by extension, our dail, are made up of middle aged men from a the same limited number of professions with wife at home minding kids full time. These guys make up only 3-4 % of the population and yet rule our nation.
The only thing I can see that has any potential to seriously open politics to a more talented pool of men and women….is gender quotas. That’s the best return you’ll get by a single change in legislation.
We are too conservative for that though..and we will continue to get the government we deserve, unfortunatly.
Funding.
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