The Dáil was suspended a number of times today as Opposition parties criticised the absence of Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, who was due to move a motion to renew key anti-terrorism legislation.
Mr Ahern was at a press conference to unveil new a package of proposals on support for victims of crime while his junior minister Barry Andrews was in the House to move the motion to renew certain sections of the Offences Against the State Act.
The provisions, introduced in the wake of the Omagh bombing in 1998, allow for the extended detention of terrorism suspects and also for the prosecution of individuals for training others in the use of firearms.
Fine Gael claimed Mr Ahern's failure to attend to move the motion himself was an insult to the House.
Justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said in a statement the Minister had been "forced into a highly embarrassing U-turn" when he had to come into the chamber to debate the anti-terrorism measures.
Mr Flanagan accused the Minister of trying to "dodge" the debate by holding "a self-promoting press conference in the Department of Justice".
“The Minister had asked a junior minister, fresh off the back benches, to represent him in the Chamber. And in a further insult to the parliamentary process, Minister Ahern’s press conference was designed to deflect attention from his Government’s refusal to support a Fine Gael Victims’ Rights Bill drafted by my colleague, Alan Shatter TD, which will be debated in the Dáil next week."
He said Fine Gael had sought a bipartisan approach to the issue and that the Minister was "playing politics" with it.
Labour Party whip Emmet Stagg said the Minister's decision to "absent" himself from the Dáil in order to hold a press conference on another matter was "clearly designed to 'gazump' the introduction of a private members" Bill in the Dáil on the same issue next week.
In a statement, he said the renewal of the provisions of the Offences Against the State Act was one of the most serious issues the Dáil faced each year and that Mr Ahern's handling of the matter was "shocking in its cynicism".
"Minister Ahern sent in a junior minister to move the motion although Minister Andrews has no knowledge or experience of this area," Mr Stagg said.
He claimed Mr Ahern had been "shamed" into moving the motion himself.
"The Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act was introduced in 1998 in the aftermath of the Omagh bomb outrage and contained very sweeping new powers for the gardaí," Mr Stagg said.
"The Oireachtas at the time recognised the seriousness of the legislation it was enacting and decided that these powers should operate for twelve months only, but included a provision that they could be renewed on a yearly basis."
He said the Labour Party had never opposed the motion to renew the provisions because it had been assured that the intelligence available to the Minister for Justice was that the powers were still required.
"However, junior minister Andrews could not have been privy to the sensitive intelligence information from the gardaí to justify the renewal of the Act," he claimed.
Mr Stagg said the treatment of the House by Mr Ahern was "part of a wider pattern of contempt shown by Ministers for the Dáil".
"The fact that Minister Ahern was eventually shamed into moving the motion himself is a good day for democracy and for the Dáil. It should serve as a warning that we will not acquiesce in the absence of government ministers from the House for important business without a serious reason."
A spokeswoman for the Minister said the reason Mr Ahern had not been in the Dáil to move the motion himself was because he had been at the press conference, which was pre-arranged.
She said Dáil business had been "pushed back" to today at the request of the Opposition parties, because they had wanted to deal with the issue of the Lisbon Treaty.
"It is not the first time a junior minister has put a motion on behalf of a full Minister," she added. "They are junior ministers and they are fully briefed."
The spokeswoman said the Minister had returned to the Dáil when the press conference was over and had ultimately moved the motion himself. "He was not embarrassed into anything," she said.