Page 3840 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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It was decided that pairs would be granted for illness of a member or close family, for other personal leave like attending funerals, and for ministers to attend ministerial councils and other related business and reasonable … travel. It goes on to say where pairs will not be granted.
He also said, and this is rather significant:
I think that that empty chair for the next two weeks should stand as a reminder of how out of touch this government have become …
We have to sit here and look at that empty chair opposite for a day and a half in exactly the same way. He also said that the former Chief Minister could have chosen any one of the other 38 weeks of the year to take his leave.
Ordinarily I would not raise the issue but I was led to believe that, as Mrs Dunne was attending a conference in Italy, it was study leave. For me, the convention in this place has been that if a member, any member, is on study leave, then there is an automatic granting of a pair. On the other hand, had I been advised that this was recreation leave and that Mrs Dunne was in fact going to pay for her own costs of this thing, I might have had another discussion altogether with the whip. This is not on. People should actually be honest when they start talking to us about these things.
As far as the leave itself is concerned, I have to state my dismay at a couple of other things that have transpired in recent times. There was a to-do about pairs today. Mr Hanson was running around the place being all offended when in fact it was quite crystal clear that the pair arrangements had been organised between our offices and there was nothing duplicitous at all. In fact, I requested my pair long before Mrs Dunne sought hers. She in fact sought hers at the last minute. We in fact received a request for a pair from Mrs Dunne through Mr Hanson’s office only a day or so before this Assembly sat.
That is not what I call an appropriate time frame, unless there is a mitigating circumstance, which there was not, because her fellow committee members knew of the proposed travel, the proposed conference, some weeks ago. I think that is appalling. It would appear as though an opportunity to stay in a castle just south of Rome, to take part in a religious conference whilst on leave, is more important than being in the chamber of the Assembly that elected her in the first place. As I said, if you are on study leave, I have got no problem. But how about being open about it?
The other concern I have is that whips are paid an allowance for doing whip-type work. Mr Hanson does not sit on the admin and procedure committee. That is what they are paid for.
I want Mr Smyth to take this next piece in the spirit in which it is offered. I would expect that tomorrow Mr Hanson will rise in this place to seek leave for Mrs Dunne for tomorrow because I do not want to see an oversight whereby Mrs Dunne would have that one absence racked up. I do not want to see that.
But I have to say, very briefly that Mr Hanson threatened not to give the Chief Minister a pair that time, and now we have to give some consideration to his words in
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