Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be as quick as I can. A number of important issues have been raised. I will start by dealing with the commercial side of things.

Freedom of information legislation and, as in the case of our discussion of semi-State companies, the Ombudsman, should not be considered the only vehicles for achieving accountability. My strong view for a long time has been that we should have a strong Parliament that holds these types of organisations to account. I wanted to change the Constitution but for whatever reasons, all of which we can debate, voters did not find favour with the proposal. New legislation is before the House and there is no reason all of the organisations to which Senator Sean Barrett referred, including CIE, could not be brought before a committee to explain themselves. Any organisation in receipt of State money should be brought before a committee. It should not be necessary to submit a freedom of information requests as these organisations should be accountable to parliamentary committees. An appropriate level of scrutiny and administrative resources and support should be available to committees to prepare for this work, as is the case in other parliaments.

I remember being told when we embarked on the Abbeylara inquiry that we could have the inquiry but all other committees would be virtually denuded of resources for the duration of the inquiry. We do not resource Parliament sufficiently to do this work. While many Members of Parliament are not interested in doing this work, a significant number of them are interested in doing so and should be empowered to perform this task. I would like such a transformation to take place and I believe there is a mood for this inside and outside the Oireachtas.

Senator Sean Barrett makes a much more fundamental point on the need for cultural change. Legislative change is one thing but cultural change is a horse of a different colour. There is no doubt that the introduction of freedom of information legislation in 1997 resulted in much less being put on paper in terms of notes prepared. In my experience, more junior ranks in the public service became less prescriptive and left more options open to more senior officials to make decisions. Freedom of information changes the way business is done. Perhaps I should not say this but just before leaving a previous meeting, I indicated to a senior official in the European Commission that I was attending a meeting to discuss freedom of information with a joint committee. The official in question stated that the Commission experienced the same issues.

While many Deputies and Senators will be very forceful on the issue of strong freedom of information legislation, they will do a little dance when freedom of information requests are made concerning their expenses and so forth. Cultural change, the notion that we do our business in a public way, is much more difficult to bring about. The corollary of this, and I make this point indirectly to the media, is that we must be allowed to make mistakes without being beaten up. The notion that one cannot make a mistake or be wrong in any public endeavour is daft. The only way to avoid making mistakes is not to do anything. When one is making real-time decisions, particularly in a time of crisis, one will not be right all the time. If one sets out ambitious targets, for example, one is beaten up if they are not achieved. Should we choose not set out targets to avoid being beaten up? Cultural change is the fundamental issue and all actors in the public sphere must be involved in bringing it about.

Regulators are encompassed in the freedom of information legislation and I can provide a list of them. They include the Commission for Aviation Regulation, Commission for Energy Regulation, Commission for Communications Regulation and National Transport Authority.