Gavan Reilly: Uneasy precedent set by vote against fox-hunting bill

If you’ve been kind enough to pick up a copy of my book The Secret Life of Leinster House – and I promise, that’s the last gratuitous plug I’ll drop here – you might have had your fill of me trying to explain some of the Oireachtas’ more unusual procedures and protocols.

If that’s the case, I’m sorry: there’s one more I need to mention, because it’s both newsworthy and important.

Last week the Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger tried to introduce a bill which, if passed, would have outlawed the practice of fox hunting. This column does not exist to pass verdict on that practice: for some it’s a practice for rural heritage; for others it’s an act of barbarism. The place for that debate is the Dáil chamber.

The problem is… the bill was killed off before it even got that far. When non-ministers are introducing a bill, it has to go through ‘first stage’, which is merely the process of introducing the bill to the House and gaining the right to have it printed by the Oireachtas. This is not where debate happens; that is a second stage debate.

And Coppinger’s Bill didn’t even get that far. Instead of the customary nod where a bill is allowed to pass through First Stage unchallenged, it was opposed by Danny Healy-Rae and the Independent Ireland leader Michael Collins, who were so aggrieved at the idea that they referred it to a vote immediately.

The Bill did indeed survive that vote, and could be debated in the chamber later this year – but notably, Sinn Féin joined forces with those opponents and voted to stop the bill from even going so far as a full debate. The Government backed its progress, for now.

If we want the Dáil to be respected as a forum for genuine debate, and to be trusted by the public to play that role, we at least have to expect the Dáil to actually debate things.