Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I again congratulate the Minister of State on her appointment. The overall rationale for this committee is the extreme democratic deficit and lack of oversight of EU legislation. This is added to by Departments when Oireachtas committees do not see the legislation. That is the fundamental problem and it has been that way for many years. It is often seen to be the case that there is no reward for detailed scrutiny of legislation, and that is why it there is not a huge engagement on it. Yet, we are all then left with the aftermath when legislation is not teased out, as we do with Bills that originate in Departments that deal with domestic issues and are within the competence of the Dáil and Seanad. That is the fundamental reason for the committee.

The problem we face, as has been outlined by others, is shown in how the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan said that he could not allow for the draft to be put online. That is the equivalent of saying we are not allowed to put the Bills that the Houses of the Oireachtas produce online. There is nothing commercially sensitive in this. It is legislation that will affect every citizen, yet we are being told that they want to put the draft online, but the Departments do not, because people and members of the committees will have opinions on them and, as a result, they are afraid they will get it in too late.

I ask the Minister of State to come in again before the summer. What has often happened is that those draft statutory instruments are put before Ministers in July and August. The Ministers are told they have four weeks with which to deal with this. There has been two years in which to do it, but it is given to the Minister with four weeks to go. I will give the example of the organ donor legislation, which I think we had seven years to bring in. The EU directive on organ donation was the only legislation we had on the issue until the human tissue Bill. It was put on James Reilly’s desk in August with three weeks to go and he signed it. It was described as the worst implementation of that directive anywhere in Europe. It was so bad that another statutory instrument was produced by the Department - again, nobody saw it - two years later to amend what had already been done. That is what we are trying to avoid here.

It is not very exciting. It is just legislation, but the impact will be hugely consequential. I will ask the Minister of State to look at the issue of why we are not being given the draft statutory instruments in a timely fashion. We will get some of them with two or maybe six weeks to go. I think there will be one on sustainability.

What we want to be able to do is to give it to the committee but the committees are all going to be busy in the last wrap-up. Timely is having two years to do it, or six months beforehand - not six weeks beforehand. We are concerned. It is all about process. What we want to be able to do is put those up on the website so that the general public and everybody else is able to look at the draft statutory instruments and say that in the absence of any changes, this is what becomes law and if you have a concern with that, then you need to engage with the sectoral committee. Our job is not to do the detailed scrutiny. That goes to the sectoral committee. Our job, along with the other one we are discussing later with respect to expanding the remit of the committee, is looking at where fines are being imposed or about to be imposed, or where letters have been issued by Europe. Our job would be to flag that to the committees and say that we think they should have a concern about that.

I think there are a number of fines - the Minister of State's officials might confirm this - that, literally as we sit here, have been €10,000 a day for months. Some Ministers' feet should be to the flames if it is costing €10,000 a day for a fine, and that is the incorrect transposition of a directive. We are finding that there are more things this committee should be doing because nobody else is doing them and we need the Minister of State's assistance on it. It is not unreasonable that, if there are two years in which to transpose a directive, the draft statutory instrument should be ready six months beforehand.