Dail business for next week suggests election may be pushed back further
Issued : Friday 7 January, 2011
Statement by Emmet Stagg TD
Chief Whip
The Dail Schedule of Business for next week, which the Opposition Whips have now received, includes none of the supposedly urgent business which Fianna Fail and the Green claim to want to see enacted, and suggests that the promised date for the general election mayl be pushed back even further.
We all remember John Gormley’s dramatic announcement on the morning of November 22nd that the Green Party believed ‘it is time to fix a date for a general election in the second half of January 2011’. On the same evening the Taoiseach announced that there would be a general election early in the New Year once the budget had been enacted.
However, since then both Fianna Fail and the Greens have been furiously backtracking at a furious rate with Eamon Ryan now saying that a March date would be acceptable to the Green Party.
The reasons both Fianna Fail and the Green Party have given for reneging on the commitments they have given to the electorate about the date of the election is that there are a number of items of urgent legislation that they wish to see enacted before the Dail is dissolved.
However, the Dail Schedule of Business for next week contains none of these items. While, it would probably have been difficult to have the Finance Bill produced in time for next week, there is no sign of the Bill to restrict contributions to political parties; no sign of the Report Stage of the Dublin Mayor Bill; no sign of the Climate Change Bill; no sign of the promised Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.
One would have thought that if the Green Party were serious about an early election, they would have insisted that some of these pieces of legislation would have put on the Schedule for next week. Instead, the government is restricting the Dail to sitting with just a day and a half and business is limited to routine and relatively non controversial items.
It now seems clear that Fianna Fail is determined to cling on to office for as long as possible and that the Green Party has once again been outwitted by their senior partners in government.
