Today in Leinster House: March 8, 2012

10:00am – Public Accounts Committee – Having held only a brief meeting behind closed doors last week, public hearings resume in Room 1 where members will be joined by Tom Moran, the secretary-general at the Department of Agriculture, and the chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Prof Alan Reilly. They will be discussing the spending on the Pigmeat Recall Scheme in 2010, the scheme under which Irish pork had to be recalled amid contamination fears.

10:30am – Leaders’ Questions – It’s Thursday, so Eamon Gilmore will be taking leaders’ questions from Mary Lou McDonald and the technical group. Fianna Fáil may again put Micheál Martin forward, or nominate another substitute who will immediately become the favourite to be FF’s new Deputy Leader.

10:30am – Order of Business – The Seanad spends 75 minutes getting its House in order…

10:51am – Order of Business – …while the Dáil takes just 20 minutes to arrange its own affairs.

11:11am – Statements on the Sale of State Assets – With no major hot-topic legislation requiring attention, members get to spend just over two hours debating the government’s announcement on the sale of state assets.

11:30am – Health and Children – In Room 2, it’s two ‘getting to know you’ sessions with Sharon Foley, the chairman-designate of the Family Support Agency, and with Joe Horan who heads the Childrens’ Detention Schools Board.

11:30am – Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement – In what could be a curiously fraught meeting in Room 4, NAMA chairman Frank Daly pops into Room 4 to discuss the role NAMA can play in the Northern Irish economy. This may be interesting, as the Good Friday committee also includes MLAs from the Stormont Assembly who could have untapped opinions on the idea of the Republic’s State-owned bad bank interfering in the Northern economy.

11:45am – Euro Area Loan Facility (Amendment) Bill 2012 (all stages) – With the Dáil having gotten a day and a half to debate the Greek bailout, the Seanad gets less than two hours to allow members air their tuppenceworth on austerity and how great/bad it is.

1:30pm – Statements on Public Sector Numbers – In its first free time since the mass exodus of public servants kicked in last week, the Dáil gets a chance to discuss the retirement of some 7,400 people from the public sector and generally where the government expects the sector to go in the next few years.

2:00pm – Competition (Amendment) Bill 2011 (second stage) – A leftover piece of legislation kicking around for some time, Senators spend two hours discussing legislation which would beef up the power of the Competition Authority. It sailed through the Dáil without hassle and isn’t likely to face difficulty here.

3:42pm – Topical Issues – Four newsworthy matters are discussed for 12 minutes apiece.

4:00pm – Matters on the Adjournment – With the Competition Bill taken care of, members discuss a couple of leftover news items before wrapping up for the week.

4:30pm – Questions (Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government) – Phil Hogan brings an end to the week with his usual batch of questions, this time dealing with septic tanks, the Greyhound debacle and NAMA social housing.

All of the day’s business can be viewed on our streams: