Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with that but I do not have my notes to hand. Late during the final session we brought forward legislation which most people would have supported, involving the introduction of measures so that people, instead of having to go prison for non-payment of a fine where somebody could not afford to pay it, community service and other measures could be considered. As I recall everybody was supportive of this at the time. There was an inadvertent outcome to that which I just cannot remember the detail of offhand, but I did raise it here and perhaps the Comptroller and Auditor General may be able to recall. We did not have time to get into it. There was an anomaly in it where if somebody chose not to pay a fine through wilful neglect, the system could not follow up on that person without holding additional court hearings which were going to clog up the whole court system with thousands of such hearings. We could usefully explore that issue too.

The only other thing I would say about the Department of Justice and Equality is that it has many seasoned public servants who work very hard and they are good at attending this committee but if we are not very specific about what we want to discuss at a given meeting, they will not discuss it. The Chairman will then be forced to say that we invited the Department to talk about X, therefore we will not talk about Y. As a general point when we are inviting representatives from the Department of Justice and Equality or indeed any Secretary General or their Accounting Officer, we propose that these are the list of five or six items, so that we are making maximum use of the time, and that there are no responses to the effect that the Department does not have the right people with them, or that they do not want to address a particular item on the day. The Chairman will then be forced, given the Kerins judgement, to say that the invitees were invited to discuiss X and we must discuss X and nothing more.