Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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We could bamboozle people with reference to the Committee on Procedures and standards and committees and all of this type of thing. Essentially, the procedures and Standing Orders which are in place state the Committee of Public Accounts cannot discuss a pertinent, ongoing, current situation without the approval of Government. That undermines exactly what the Committee of Public Accounts should be doing. It should be independent of Government. It should be apolitical in that sense. We are of course all political elected representatives but the current situation is farcical and it undermines the purpose of a Committee of Public Accounts. I am not aware of a single other parliamentary accounting oversight body in the world that is expected to operate under the procedure we have here to such an extent as we have been. We had the Department of Education before us and we had to skirt around what was a pertinent current issue as if we were not aware of it, as if we were living on different planets. We could conceivably have the Office of Public Works, OPW, in next week, for example, and there could be a front-page story about a very pertinent issue where we find out that the HSE has got itself into a melee that has cost taxpayers millions of euro and yet the OPW could refuse to answer and the Chairman would be expected to intervene. That is just lunacy.

The Standing Orders need to be revisited. To give the benefit of the doubt I am not sure if that was the intention of those people when they first started approaching it. I am being generous in assuming this is an unintended consequence because it would be a very serious matter if this was the intention of the drafters. The proposal in the first instance is fine and the children's hospital is absolutely something that is clearly in the public interest and clearly has an impact on the public accounts so therefore it would be interesting. I am assuming nobody could argue against the Committee of Public Accounts but I hope the very fact we have to request that would enlighten the members of the Committee on Procedure and others of the farcical nature of the current situation. As such, let us absolutely put in the request. I agree with Deputy MacSharry. It would be more of a game changer if his colleagues on the committee, as opposed to mine, came to a position where they were willing to agree to a commonsense approach to all of this. That is not to say this committee has nothing to learn from previous issues and particularly from the Kerins judgment. We all accept we do but this is very much a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and undermining public accountability.