Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and the fact that ignorance is not a defence before the law, but this legislation is not yet law. In response to Deputy Calleary earlier, I committed to writing to local authority representative bodies, for example, to notify them of what is currently before the Oireachtas, which we will do. However, we are debating a point of principle, namely, whether this body should have the ability to initiate an investigation if it believes it is warranted. If the commissioner believes that a matter has been declared, or not declared, he or she has a concern about it, and he or she alone is in possession of that information, should the commissioner have the ability to do something about it? I believe the answer to that question has to be "yes" because if not, we will be back to all of this being driven by the kind of impulse we have currently, much of which is reactive.

We can consider before Report Stage Deputy D'Arcy's concern to make sure we do not get to a point where there is the potential for a wave of unnecessary investigations being carried out. I understand his concern. What we might do is look at section 35 on the preliminary inquiry to see if that section could be strengthened to ensure we do not get to the point where investigations or inquiries are carried out on matters that are evidently not required.