Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes the fact that I am half-German comes out in me and I do things in a direct way. I was listening with interest to what the Chair was saying and he put it well when he described the experience of this committee when it comes to people coming up during our deliberations and us seeing the impact. I hope that going away from this meeting the Minister understands the importance the committee places on fairness for whistleblowers.

I will go to Vote 12. It links back to a question I was asking earlier and it links specifically to pensions and retirement. It is about the Department's two roles in managing expenditure and promoting positive reform. We know from the past, due to commissions of investigation and so on, that a lot of money has been paid by the State for all of that. We also know that people have not always felt that accountability has come to the fore and that we have not always seen the positive reform many would have hoped for. One of the proposals that came out of the Mahon tribunal on pensions was quite interesting to me. It was that Oireachtas Members who were found to have engaged in certain types of gross misconduct could have their pension rights withdrawn. In 2012 this proposal was endorsed by Deputies from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The current Ceann Comhairle and the current Minister for Finance supported it and the former Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, supported it and she went on to say it could be applied to senior officials. Then it was suggested at the time that the then Government was planning to establish a constitutional convention to look at the matter. Has that been considered since and would it require a referendum?

I ask about the referendum because back in 2012, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, who was not a Minister at the time, was of the view that a referendum would not be required. I will mention and highlight it to him again in relation to that former view on an ethics review. He had said there was some legislation on the books already that dates back to the 19th century that could potentially be amended to achieve this. I had a quick look to see if this had been done in other jurisdictions and I found some examples. Under the European Commission's code of conduct, a Commissioner can have their rights to a pension or other benefits withdrawn if they breach certain legal obligations. In India, a former Government official can have their pension withdrawn or reduced if found guilty of grave misconduct. Is this something that was raised after the Mahon tribunal and is it still being considered? Would it require a referendum?