John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

The tribunal was mandated to examine certain specific activities and also to investigate any other matters that came to its attention that could amount to corrupt acts in the period since June 1985.

Two Acts from 1998 allowed for the changing of a tribunal's terms of reference, at the request of the tribunal or following consultation between the tribunal and the Attorney General on behalf of a Minister. Subsequently, in July 1998, at the request of the planning tribunal, its terms of reference were further expanded to give it a mandate to investigate any allegation of corruption associated with the planning process.

In June 2001, the then sole member of the tribunal, Justice Flood, in anticipation of extensive future public inquiries, requested the appointment of further members to the tribunal. The Government responded to this request by making provision in a 2002 Act that enabled additional members to be appointed to a tribunal. On foot of this, two additional members were appointed to the planning tribunal in October 2002, one of them the current chairman, Judge Mahon. It was necessary to introduce a further Act in 2004 to ensure that Judge Mahon, as the then new chairperson of the tribunal, could make orders regarding applications for costs incurred during the tenure of the preceding chairman. A separate Act in May 2004 provided, among other things, that a tribunal consisting of more than one member might act in divisions.

Notwithstanding the fact that the tribunal was expanded to comprise three members, its subsequent work, based on its terms of reference, proved very unwieldy. The tribunal published a fourth interim report in June 2004, which gave a broad overview of the work then on hand and indicated that there remained a large volume of work in respect of which public hearings had not yet begun. The tribunal indicated that it could see this work carrying on until 2014 or 2015. Accordingly, it requested changes to its terms of reference to allow it more discretion in the issues that it investigated or chose not to pursue, so as to shorten the anticipated duration of its work.

In November 2004, the tribunal's terms of reference were amended accordingly, in agreement with the tribunal, and an Act was brought forward to give necessary legal backing to the wider discretion being granted to it.

See this speech in context