Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 4, between lines 15 and 16, to insert the following:

2.—Every order made by the Minister or by the Minister for Health and Children under this Act shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made.

This is a fairly standard proposal to ensure there is some level of accountability in respect of these orders. We need some resort to the Houses of the Oireachtas. We often produce legislation which goes on to a shelf, or to whichever Department is responsible for its implementation, and forget about it. In most cases nothing is ever done with the legislation, as we know from the large quantity of Bills gathering dust, only certain sections of which are implemented.

This section is likely to be implemented, namely, orders made by the Minister under the Act, and the provision we make for that process. The problem is that we have no authority over those orders when they are made. They relate to detention, release and other matters regarding the review board and so on, that are very important. They concern a person's freedoms, care, treatment and appearance before the courts.

In normal circumstances no doubt everything will be fine but we do not have the luxury of washing our hands of an Act when we provide secondary powers to this Minister or the Minister for Health and Children to operate the legislation. None of these orders will be returned to the House. The Minister said on Committee Stage he did not want to have commencement and establishment orders revoked. That is fair enough and is why I have excluded them in my new amendment. My amendment is quite minimalist in that respect and requires only one step to be taken, namely that the orders be laid before the House. If they are, we have a passive rather than a proactive situation. It means some action can be taken but at the very least it means the orders can be on the floor of the House, are in the Library and can be inspected. People engaged in debating this legislation in the House might feel that is worthwhile and desirable, and that there is a duty to ensure the orders are in accordance with what people thought would happen when the legislation was being discussed.

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