agenda.ie a guide to what's going on in Leinster House

THE DÁIL’S WEEK is largely wrapped up with finalising the Personal Insolvency Bill 2012, but the committee schedule is unusually packed out in order to compensate for the less-than-chaotic Seanad timetable.

1:30pm – Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation – The week begins in Room 2, where members dissect EU plans to regulate the the access of third-party countries to European tenders, before hearing from the Employment Appeals Tribunal in discussing a report on creating a new, over-arching, singular employment appeals and workplace relations body.

2:00pm – Questions (Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine) – Simon Coveney gets the Dáil going with questions on stocking density in farms, the possibility of flat-rate payments under the CAP, and the reform of that agricultural policy next year.

2:00pm – Committee on EU Affairs – There’s a high-ranking delegation of MEPs over in Room 1 – where the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee will attend to offer an ‘exchange of views’, in advance of Ireland’s own constitutional convention.

2:15pm – Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht – Another testy topic in Room 4: John Mullins, the chief executive of Bord Gais, will discuss the progress being made in the establishment of Uisce Éireann, the new body in charge of water charges.

3:15pm – Leaders’ Questions – Enda Kenny steps in to take high-profile questions from Micheál Martin, Gerry Adams and the technical group.

3:15pm – Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine – In Room 3 members will get through a raft of EU legislative proposals – including plans on safeguarding European eel stocks – before departmental officials discuss the forthcoming reviews of the Common Agricultural Policy, Food Harvest 2020 and the Common Fisheries Policy.

3:36pm – Questions (Taoiseach) – Having dealt with the busier topics, Enda Kenny takes more sedate questions on the cabinet sub-committees on health, mortgage arrears and economic recovery.

4:36pm – Order of Business – TDs agree to the day’s agenda – a session which will inevitably take more than 30 minutes, given the deluge of backbench queries following the mid-term week off.

5:06pm – Topical Issues – Four topical issues are discussed for four minutes apiece…

5:54pm – Fiscal Responsibility Bill 2012 (report and final stages) – …before a final hour (or so) of discussion on the EU’s Fiscal Compact rules, which formally limit the size of a Budget deficit a country can run in any one year. In Ireland’s case this won’t kick in until 2018.

7:00pm – Personal Insolvency Bill 2012 (report and final stages) – The Dáil’s week, as previously mentioned, is almost universally wrapped up with processing the final amendments to the Personal Insolvency Bill – legislation allowing personal debts to be wiped away in some circumstances.

7:30pm – Private Members’ Business [Technical Group] – Motion re pensions and lump sums – Mattie McGrath is the independent TD to get the private members’ time this year; his motion is a blunt one. It calls on the government to abandon the current system of…

“paying grossly overgenerous pensions and massive lump sums on retirement to office holders such as Cabinet Ministers, Taoisigh, TDs, Senators, senior public servants, State regulators including the Financial Regulator, members of the judiciary and the CEOs of semi-State bodies and State funded banks”.

Debate continues until 9pm.

9:00pm – as 7pm – Once that’s done, there’s another hour of consideration of the insolvency legislation before the lights are turned out.

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

• Dáil: Web stream, Facebook stream
• Seanad: Web stream, Facebook stream
• Committee Room 1: Web stream, Facebook stream
• Committee Room 2: Web stream, Facebook stream
• Committee Room 3: Web stream, Facebook stream
• Committee Room 4: Web stream, Facebook stream