Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

This Bill is inadequate to meet the situation that exists in Irish society. Unfortunately, the ordinary citizen has serious concerns about how the financial, economic and political sections of the establishment behave. The Bill is supposed to provide for the establishment from time to time of commissions to investigate into and report on matters considered to be of significant public concern.

There is no doubt there are matters of significant public concern at present. The tribunals of inquiry currently sitting, the first of which was established in 1997, were set up to address public concern at that time about revelations of corruption in public life and the nature of the interaction between big business, developers, speculators and senior politicians at the interface of business and politics. I was a new Member of the House when I voted in autumn 1997 for the establishment of the first of these tribunals. I wholeheartedly welcome the revelations of corrupt practices which have been exposed through the work of the tribunals. Many of us who served on local authorities, and I served on Dublin County Council for a number of years, knew the extent of the corruption involving key councillors from the major conservative parties and developers and speculators. We smelt the corruption in the corridors of Dublin County Council but we could not prove it. Scandalously, I have no doubt that the leaders of those parties knew what their members were involved in but they accepted it. They did not move to stop it.

I welcome the fact that we now have a clearer picture of what happened and who was involved. However, the length of time it is taking the tribunals to get their work done and to get to the facts is now a source of serious public concern. The costs of the tribunals are a source of scandal to ordinary taxpayers. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in his remarks on Second Stage mentioned that the costs of the tribunals to date were a €100 million. What has happened is clear. The tribunals have been subverted from their initial and primary purpose, which was to ferret out the truth, flush corruption into the open and put the names of those responsible for it into the public domain. However, since then they have become the creatures of the lawyers.

In the early days, when the media spoke about millionaires at the tribunals, people assumed they were referring to the speculators and the people who are being investigated for having corrupted the political process and right wing politicians. If one now speaks of millionaires at tribunals, one is as likely to be speaking of the lawyers who have been made millionaires by the same tribunals. I remarked in the House some time ago, on the first revelation of the extent of the costs and fees commanded, that the tribunals were creating more millionaires than they were investigating. It is clear we are being held to ransom because this and previous Governments have refused to tackle the more privileged section of the legal profession regarding the fact it can demand any fees it wishes. It is no wonder that working people, PAYE taxpayers and people living on the margins look askance at what is happening in the tribunals. The situation is unsustainable and moves should have been made against it long ago.

We also see that those who have a great deal to lose, namely, those who fear the quick emergence of the truth, have taken to appearing in front of the tribunals with a virtual caravan of lawyers in tow. They spare no expense to delay and frustrate the work of the tribunals and, in particular, the pace at which they progress. The Government also has an agenda. There is no question but that the inordinate delay in the progress of the work and the issues suits the Government no end because it has minimised the political impact of the tribunal's horrific revelations.

Earlier in the first term of the Government, revelations of corruption touching colleagues of the Progressive Democrats in the Fianna Fáil party would send a frisson of nervousness through them. In some circumstances the frisson might even have developed into a shudder threatening the continuation of Government or even its fall. This would have been much more likely to happen had the revelations of corruption emerged quickly and succinctly because they would then have had the maximum impact.

Now, however, five or six years later, the Progressive Democrats Party has become much more sanguine about the goings-on of members of its partner in coalition. It would now take an earthquake to move the two parties apart. Apart from the revelations so far, the scandalous revelations of Mr. Gilmartin in recent days do not appear to have sent even a slight shiver down the spines of the Progressive Democrats in this Government. It is clear it would take an earthquake to move them.

As we have seen from the Minister of State, considerations closer to home have taken over. For example, on budget day when the Tullamore races were taking place, he almost fell over himself in his rush to his constituency to announce decentralisation. Such immediate electoral considerations are much more to the front of the minds of the Progressive Democrats. I was never really under the illusion that they would act as watchdogs in the Government, but some credence might have been given to that at one stage.

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