Clerk to the Committee:

The new legislation, Houses of the Oireachtas (Powers of Inquiry) Bill, should be passed by the Seanad today, if it was not passed yesterday. It includes a new section. The compellability legislation, dating back to 1997, has been completely replaced. The advice was that we should deal with this issue under the new legislation because if we were to do so under the old legislation, there was a likelihood we would end up in trouble. There was a slight risk somebody could have said we were compelling him or her under legislation which was no longer on the Statute Book.