Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to come in on this. This is my first Dáil term but to what extent is this committee culpable in that regard? We are supposed to be providing oversight to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Defence. If a Department is not doing a job that it announced with great fanfare in 2015 and then utterly ignored it thereafter, surely there is some responsibility on us to wheel it in and get it to account for its lack of action.

To follow up on what Senator Ardagh said, it is very similar to a relationship type of "we love you guys but we will do everything in our power to undermine you, frustrate you and neglect you". This is what is being said. The Minister for Defence will say he loves the Defence Forces but two-and-a-half years ago we created a brand-new Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and left the Defence Forces with a part-time Minister trying to do six jobs at once. Are we an oversight parliamentary committee that is meant to enforce standards and hold people to account or are we just a forum to air people's views?