Professor David Farrell:

That is a good question. In that sense, one can talk about a sin of commission. There is a failure on the part of successive Governments, the current one included, to address a serious shortcoming in how government systems operate and that is the weakness of our Parliament. There has been much talk about Dáil reform, but we have yet to see serious Dáil reform. With the singular exception of pre-legislative scrutiny, there has not been serious engagement by this or previous Governments with Dáil reform. What many of us have been arguing for in terms of parliamentary reform - as I set out in passing in part of my paper - is a secretly elected Ceann Comhairle and a clear agenda for root and branch reform of how the Dáil operates, with an equivalent exercise being undertaken in the Seanad at the same time. There is a need to look at how the Dáil can have a much greater say in setting its own agenda and the allocation of its own resources, with other reforms relating to how committees are formed, including the notion that committee membership is more a privilege than a right. It should be the case, perhaps, that a Member would be appointed to no more than one committee and that committee work is viewed as a serious part of a Member's parliamentary work. There should be committee weeks in order that committee members would have the scope to get on with their committee work, quite apart from any other legislative work. There should be proper resourcing of committees and proper resourcing of the parliamentary function rather than the resourcing of individual parliamentarians. I could go on, but these are the sorts of thing that have been mentioned and bandied about and on which we have yet to see any serious engagement. In that sense, I would go along with the Deputy's question as framed in that there are some sins of commission in that regard.