Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I now call the committee back into public session. Is that agreed? Agreed. We will now commence with session 2 of this morning's hearings, which is a discussion with Professor Niamh Hardiman, UCD, on systems of governance. At our sessions this morning, we are focusing on the theme of relationships between State authorities, political parties, elected representatives, supervisory authorities, banking institutions and the property sector.

For our next session, I would like to welcome to the meeting Professor Niamh Hardiman to discuss the issue of systems of governance. Professor Hardiman is associate professor of political science and public policy. She has studied at UCD and Nuffield College, Oxford, and worked for a time at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. For several years, she was a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, where she was the tutor in politics before moving to the school of politics and international relations in UCD, where she is director of graduate studies and director of the interdisciplinary public policy programme. Her research interests centre on the political economy and public policy. She is interested in the politics underlying policy outcomes, the politics of how public policy priorities are formed and implemented, the implications of institutional design for good governance and the political economy of growth, distribution and redistribution. Among her recent papers are work on comparative fiscal responses to crises, methodological challenges arising from analysis of fiscal policy choices, the political economy of housing bubbles, new approaches to thinking about the European periphery, the effects of crisis on State structures, the implications of State structures for vulnerability to crisis and the fiscal foundations of the State. Professor Hardiman is very welcome to the inquiry this morning.

Before I begin, I wish to advise the witness that, by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. If Professor Hardiman is directed by the Chairman to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continues to so do, she is entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of her evidence. She is directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given. As she has been informed previously, the committee is asking witnesses to refrain from discussing named individuals in this phase of the inquiry.

Members are reminded of the long-standing ruling of the Chair to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I call on Professor Hardiman to make her opening remarks.