First, I am disappointed that my proposed amendment and the amendment from Deputy Gibney were ruled out of order. I understand the reason given was that they were not in line with the spirit of the Bill. Deputy Gibney's amendment sought to have the maximum number of junior Ministers set at 20, while I sought to have it set at 15. It seems to me that this is legislation changing the number of junior Ministers. I wonder whether, if we had changed the proposed figure from 20 to 24, it would have been in order. Are we only allowed to increase the number of junior Ministers and not decrease it? Perhaps we can discuss that somewhere.

Sentiment score: 0.03

Is the Minister not embarrassed to have his first act in this Government and in this Dáil be such a stroke and to be so blatant in sharing out the spoils of political office? Is he not embarrassed to have to trot out the line that "Oh, it is really about the size of the population and we need more people" and so on? Does it not cause him to cringe even a little bit inside to so blatantly make Ministers of one sort or another not far off one in two Government TDs? Does he not see it is very blatant and obvious to people what is happening here? This is not in the Bill but it has been reported in relation to the junior Ministers that the law is going to be changed to enable them to continue to receive the travel and accommodation allowance received by TDs who are not Ministers. For some, this will be worth upwards of €35,000 annually. How is that going to be done and when is it going to be done? Will it be through a ministerial order or through legislation? Again, how can this possibly be justified? Is €176,000 for being a junior Minister, four times average earnings, not enough for a junior Minister? I will leave it there and, hopefully, come back in on the other sections.

Sentiment score: 0.17