Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I offer the support of Fine Gael for the reappointment of Emily O'Reilly as Ombudsman. She is a native of Tullamore, County Offaly, which no doubt commends her to the Government. She has many other traits that also make her suitable for this post.

She has brought great effectiveness to this office, which is now 25 years old. In that time the office has done excellent work, handling more than 70,000 complaints. It has been an important service to those who are not otherwise protected. The Ombudsman's office singularly pioneered an issue which is before the House today, the inequity in the way people who had cover under the Health Acts were abandoned by the State when it came to nursing home care. The Ombudsman's office continually highlighted this unfairness in its reports. The ultimate end of that process is in the legislation before us today which, flawed as it may be, tries to address something the Ombudsman has been pursuing for more than a decade.

The issue of holding power to account is one about which our society must think long and hard. Today we are seeing the fall-out from the failure to hold to account power in the church and the appalling impact that has had on people's lives. We are also grappling with the failure to hold to account power within the financial services system, with the appalling results for our economy. We must look afresh at how effectively we in the Dáil hold power to account. That includes political power, which is poorly held to account compared to other more forensic and powerful parliamentary systems. The accountability of agencies that are doing the work we fund must be also more powerfully monitored. Monopolies, private and public, that have the protection of being exclusive in their role in particular sectors sometimes abuse that power.

In the wake of all these problems we should afresh at the effectiveness of the Oireachtas at holding power to account and consider whether we should think about new avenues. The Ombudsman and the Freedom of Information Act are important protections and have had significant victories. We have a long way to go, however, to get a system where those elected by the people are in a position to shine a light into all corners of Irish life, ensuring those who are vulnerable are treated properly and that people are doing their work with due care and prudence, protecting all of our interests, including the interests of those who cannot express their concerns.

This is not the occasion for that debate but recent experiences underline the importance of Oireachtas Members taking this role more seriously and equipping our committees to deal with it more seriously. Hopefully that will be one result of the debates we will soon have on the protection of children, the protection of people against financial buccaneering and other debates that are necessary on holding power to account. It is to people like Emily O'Reilly we can look for advice on doing that.

See this speech in context