GOVERNMENT and Opposition are in dispute over the time allocated to debate a confidence motion arising out of the delay in giving effect to a Cabinet decision to reassign Judge Dominic Lynch from the Special Criminal Court.
The Government Chief Whip, Mr Jim Higgins, said last night the Coalition's motion confirming confidence in its own ministers would be proposed by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, and debated from 4.15 to 10 pm. tomorrow, at which point a vote would be taken.
The motion supersedes an Opposition motion of no confidence in the Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, and the Attorney General, Mr Dermot Gleeson. Mr Higgins pointed out that the Opposition motion would have been debated for three hours in Fianna Fail's private member's time tomorrow and Wednesday, but as a result of the Government decision there would now be almost three hours more for the debate.
However, the Fianna Fail Chief Whip, Mr Dermot Ahern, said the Government was proposing a "minuscule" debate. Fianna Fail was asking for a debate to last all day tomorrow and Wednesday. Mr Ahern also said it was time for the Labour Party to "crawl out of the woodwork" and make clear where it stood on the whole issue.
Fianna Fail will now force two votes on the Order of Business tomorrow, on the duration of the confidence debate and on the Government's proposal to delete Private Member's Time to allow bits own confidence motion to be debated.
Mr Higgins responded: "If they want to be obstructive and use up the time forcing spurious votes that's a matter for themselves."
The Progressive Democrats' Whip, Ms Liz O'Donnell, said that, by limiting the debate to a single day, the Government was "trying to make light" of the serious issues at stake.
She had tabled a series of questions to the Minister for written reply on Wednesday seeking the text of letters written by the Attorney General to Mrs Owen and querying how an assistant secretary in the Department of Justice, who was not in the courts division, became aware that a problem had arisen regarding cases in the Special Criminal Court.
The PD leader, Ms Mary Harney, said it "defied belief" that Mr Gleeson merely saw fit to write to Mrs Owen. "If the house is on fire, you don't write to the fire brigade."
The Fianna Fail deputy leader, Ms Mary O'Rourke, said it was "obvious from weekend newspapers that knives are being sharpened for a junior official in the Department of Justice, who will be duly sacrificed while the Minister brazenly wraps herself in the pathetic, surreal, frenzied plaudits of her rainbow partners".
The chairman of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party, Mr Phil Hogan, said there had been "a very serious lapse" in the administration of the Department and "key line managers responsible for the specific task of communicating the particular decision of the Government must be brought to book".
Mrs Owen was "a decent, hardworking, honest and honourable politician" and calls for her resignation were "nonsensical and hysterical". Mr Hogan accused the Fianna Fail justice spokesman, Mr John O'Donoghue, of a "hyper Redemptorist style of pulpit thumping and rantings".
Mrs Owen was defended by her colleague, the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, who said it was "quite clear to every fair minded person that she has had no personal responsibility for these events, and that the personal attacks launched on her by Opposition deputies are merely another example of the Opposition strenuously pursuing their own political agenda".