Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister of State's bona fides on this issue. I know she wants to make it work. This situation has been going on for 50 years. I and others fought hard to have this committee established. It was set up on foot of a Cabinet decision. Its title is the Seanad Select Committee on the Scrutiny of Draft EU-related Statutory Instruments. The title reflects what we are supposed to be doing here. A previous Attorney General said at Cabinet that it was okay for the Oireachtas to have a committee to engage in this scrutiny. If EU statutory instruments are drafts, it means they are not signed into Irish law at the point at which they are being scrutinised. The current Attorney General is saying we are not allowed to see the draft laws. He is saying the Minister will sign them into law and we can then have a look at them. Will the Minister of State clarify that this is the advice that has been given?

The reason the committee was set up was to ensure people can have confidence that the Government is making law in an open and transparent manner. The work of the committee is about scrutinising laws in advance to make sure they are done correctly. As I have said previously, the worst example of a law being made in secret, without any committee, TD or Senator ever seeing it, was the first law in the history of the State to deal with organ donation. It was 36 pages long and no health committee, TD or Senator saw it. It was signed into law without anybody seeing it. Does that sound like open and transparent government? No, it does not. That law was so badly drafted and got so little scrutiny that, two years later, the same Department of Health that had introduced it added 16 more pages. The Department then got another Minister to sign it without anybody seeing it. Again, it was signed into law without any TD or Senator, or any member of the public, seeing it. This committee was set up to stop that from happening.

The Attorney General is now saying it is okay for a Minister to sign a draft statutory instrument into Irish law without any scrutiny. In fact, the Minister is not allowed to share it with TDs, Senators, any committee or, worse still, the citizens of Ireland whom it will affect. After a whole year, we have come to this point.