Tánaiste slices life out of parliamentary democracy
The Tánaiste was unashamedly brazen about her regime’s use of the lethal Dáil device to cut off debate on 16 different bills in the past week as it rushed through often highly contentious legislation before the TDs’ two-month holidays kick-off today.
Now this might – might – be excusable if the Dáil had been working flat out for the past year, but as it actually had to shut down for several hours the other week because it had completely run out of anything to talk about, and is – by international standards – little more than a rubber stamp, part-time joke parliament at the best of times, this brutal wielding of the executive knife to silence debate is certainly not acceptable.
