Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Bill published by Deputy Pat Rabbitte on behalf of the Labour Party, which confers express powers on the Houses of the Oireachtas to conduct inquiries. The Bill provides a foundation for very important discussion and debate on the function of this House, the standing of the constitutional powers conferred on it and issues of accountability which are of central concern to many outside the House.

The Labour Party Bill seeks to get around the difficulties created by the Abbeylara judgment in so far as it is perceived, as a consequence of that judgment, that this House cannot conduct meaningful inquiries into any issue that goes beyond the area of simple policy and towards the area of determining and identifying who may or may not be accountable for various decisions made or outcomes that have occurred, including some disasters of policy that have affected the country.

I note that in the explanatory memorandum to the Bill, the view is expressed by Deputy Rabbitte on behalf of the Labour Party that we do not need a constitutional amendment and that the consequences of the Abbeylara judgment can be addressed without any such amendment by ordinary legislation. I disagree with that view. Two issues emerged from the Abbeylara judgment with which I am particularly familiar because I made direct submissions to both the High Court and the Supreme Court in this regard. The first issue was whether the Houses of the Oireachtas, under the Constitution, had inherent powers to conduct inquiries. The view of the majority of the Supreme Court was that it did not, although the minority judgment of the then Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Keane, was that it did.

The second issue was that it was inappropriate that a committee of inquiry - even if we did have such powers - in which Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas were involved should make a determination or express an opinion which had a detrimental impact on the good name or reputation of an individual. The good name and reputation of a person is expressly recognised as something one has a right to protect under the Constitution. Even in circumstances in which the Houses of the Oireachtas applied proper procedures to protect and apply the principles of what is known as constitutional justice, the implication is that such findings cannot be made. That is recognised, to an extent, in the Labour Party Bill, in which section 4 seeks to delimit the nature of the inquiry that might be conducted.

The principle of the Bill should be supported, but we need to go much further. The real problem is that we do not do accountability in the House. Although the Constitution provides for a parliamentary democracy and Government accountability to Parliament, the reality is that there is little real accountability and no sense of obligation on the part of the parties in Government - both the Green Party, which has been there briefly, and Fianna Fáil, which has been there far too long. They believe, essentially, that whatever they do does not need to be explained and they should not be held to account for the mistakes they make.

There is also no sense of accountability in the wider public service. I am not trying to pillory individuals, but we must ensure that when policy decisions are made and things go badly wrong, the Ministers who make these decisions can be held truly accountable. Where those policy decisions are framed or substantially contributed to by public servants, they should explain the approach taken and be accountable for that approach. Where there is massive failure of regulation - such as the failures of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator which have contributed to the economic and banking disaster with which we are confronted - it is not good enough that there can be a blancmange-like description of what went wrong, without any criticism of the decision makers who got it so wrong or identification of the extent to which they made mistakes to ensure they are not repeated in the future.

If we are to address this issue properly, we need to confer on this House the type of constitutional power that is expressly vested in committees of inquiry in the US Congress and Senate and in other European Parliaments. This Parliament, and its capacity to inquire seriously into issues and make findings of substance, was castrated by the Abbeylara judgment of the Supreme Court. There was only one judge, Mr. Justice Keane, whose decision seemed to give any insight into the functions of Parliament. In addressing the dichotomy between the right of an individual to have his or her reputation protected and the obligation of Parliament to properly inquire into issues of public importance and make decisions on accountability, he stated, "The right of persons in the position of the respondents to their good name must be balanced against the right, and indeed the duty, of the Oireachtas to inquire into and inform themselves as to matters which are relevant to the discharge by them of their constitutional functions."

In this House, our constitutional functions are to enact legislation; to ensure legislation is properly applied in the context of the Financial Regulator - in the case of the predecessor of the current Financial Regulator, it clearly was not; to ensure the Central Bank meets its statutory obligations and, where it has not, to inquire into what went wrong; and, where policy decisions are made by Government, to address what went wrong and who is responsible. There should be an acknowledgment on the Government's part that we need constitutional change.

I listened to the Taoiseach on this issue a few days ago and it was absolutely clear that he would prefer to stand on his hands and wiggle his toes in the air than to provide for a political ethos in which there is a true sense of accountability. The reason is that if this House had the proper powers that should be available to it, Ministers could be hauled into committees of inquiry and made to account fully and properly for some of the disastrous decisions they have made. The current position is extraordinarily cosy and protective of Ministers.

We have seen only today in the House how we do not do accountability. The reality is that in any other European Parliament, or in the British Parliament - we have slavishly copied the procedures of the British Parliament; the only difference is we are still stuck with the procedures of the 1950s, while the UK has moved into 2010 - if a Government Minister had sworn an affidavit which produced a High Court decision and effectively had been found to have been committing perjury, that Minister would have been held accountable and would have had to resign.

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