Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 11 July 2019
Public Accounts Committee
Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Appropriation Account 2018
9:00 am
Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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It should not have taken the Supreme Court to tell us that in an Oireachtas of 218 Members with 28 of them being elevated to a position of Chairperson there should have been a programme of training to be a committee Chairperson. In the Oireachtas we have all been collectively remiss in not having any programme for training Chairpersons. The Supreme Court felt it was such an important issue that it specifically highlighted it. It is good. We will do it now. Having heard from the Supreme Court it is blatantly obvious we should have done something about Chairpersons getting some training. I am sure that if somebody within the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas Service is promoted to a role he or she never held before, there must be some element of training of what the new role is about. We accept that that is long overdue and very necessary.
Is it correct that there were no remedies in place where there was a problem for a particular witness?