David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)

We are sent by the people as representatives to do a number of jobs, one of the most important being to represent the citizen, namely, Mrs. Murphy down the road or the man up the road who has a problem with bureaucracy or the State and who needs help. We are also sent to the House to legislate and to hold the Government of the day to account. This responsibility rests on the shoulder of every Deputy, no matter on which side of the House he or she sits. The structures and procedures of the House are so archaic that they prevent Members from doing this constitutional job.

Ministers are powerful and have been given authority and responsibility, but with that comes accountability. In recent years, Governments and Departments have been establishing quangos that are not directly accountable to the House, particularly through the parliamentary question system. Today, I submitted a written question to the Minister for Education and Science on behalf of a child with special needs who has no school place. I was told to write to the agency, as the Minister had no responsibility for the matter. This is not good enough. We could go on about those times when the Ceann Comhairle returns our requests and we are told that a Minister has no responsibility for a matter and that it is now the responsibility of the HSE, National Roads Authority, FÁS and so on. These quangos are responsible for spending millions, if not billions of euro of taxpayers' money, but we, the people's representatives, cannot get answers about their operations via parliamentary questions.

Since entering the House, I have asked that this system be changed. At least Deputy O'Rourke tried when she was a Minister. While she would tell the House that she was not responsible for the day-to-day operation of some agency, she would give the information that the Deputy wanted and it was put on the record.

The establishment of the HSE has meant that we cannot directly represent citizens through parliamentary questions. As my colleagues have pointed out, that agency shields the Minister for Health and Children. She tells us that it, rather than she, is responsible. The agency writes to us privately after, as my colleague mentioned, three or four weeks or, in some cases, 18 weeks. The real trick is that the response does not go on the public record. We are supposed to be a republic, but the information is a secret, if one likes, between the Deputy, if he or she even gets a response. Our friends in the Fourth Estate and the public are denied the information. Doing this is dangerous.

A part of the reason for our current economic mess is the fact that Deputies were not allowed to do their jobs because of the manner in which procedures have been allowed to develop. It is important that we shake up the political and democratic systems so as that we can ask questions of Ministers and get responses in the House. A Department's first reaction seems to be to determine how not to answer a question or how to give the least amount of information. This culture must change. It is not good enough in our democracy. If we are a democracy, we must allow information to flow.

The NRA takes land from people via compulsory purchase orders. They wait and wait to get paid. When we write to the NRA, the letters in reply tell us that these matters are being considered and that responses will issue in due course. When we ask a Minister a question, it will not even get to him or her. This is not good enough, but it goes on in most of the agencies in question.

I support the Bill. It is a start, but much more needs to be done. We must move away from appointing people to State boards because they are friends of the Minister of the day. We must know their qualifications. They must do their jobs and be accountable to the House. Ministers must do their jobs because they have the authority to tell agencies to give them the information for which they have been asked and to provide it in the Dáil. If Ministers are afraid to do this, they should resign their positions, since this is their ultimate responsibility to the State's citizens.

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