Protection of the Environment Bill - Update

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday June 25, 2003 18:14 by Justin Moran - Sinn Fein maigh_nuad at yahoo dot com

Legislation update

After four marathon Committee meetings where the Protection against the Environment Bill has been fought every step of the way, most notably by Arthur Morgan of Sinn Féin and Eamon Gilmore of Labour, (Not just plugging my own, the record will bear this out) and which are still not resolved the Government has announced that they intend the final vote on the Bill to be taken at 9.30pm on next Tuesday.

Sinn Féin, and presumably others, will be objecting to this in an effort to prolong the debate possibly until after the summer recess though this now looks, despite the efforts of many TDs to drag it out as long as possible, unlikely.

So, odds are the Bill will be passed by the Dáil next week, possibly at 9.30pm on Tuesday and if that time changes I'll update people in case they want to protest.

On a related note, was talking to two Fianna Fail TDs today. While both of them are aware that local people oppose the Bin Tax, while both of them admitted they have had the issue raised with them a couple of times by people on the doorsteps, neither of them has received a phone call on the issue since the election. As a result, they were fairly nonchalant about the vote on Tuesday.

As next week is the last week of Dáil business until October the Government is ramming through everything it was too fucking lazy to work on before this so now's the last chance to protest at the Dáil for a few months.