Dáil debates

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Reform of Structures of Government: Motion (Resumed)

 

8:00 pm

Photo of Seán SherlockSeán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I will follow on from the theme as espoused by Deputy McManus on the role of the Ombudsman. In a speech given by her recently on her office and this institution, she quoted from a speech made by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, in which he stated:

[W]e should ... return Dáil Éireann to a central place in public thinking. It should be the battleground for ideas, the location for intellectual debate ... where the brightest and best work in concert to achieve optimal results over the long term, not cheap point-scoring in the short term.

Those are the words of a Fianna Fáil Minister - a Front Bench senior Minister of long standing. The Ombudsman referred to the lost at sea report. I can only speak about my own experience of this Parliament and state that the manner in which the lost at sea report was dealt with suggested to me that no matter what the Ombudsman's finding was, the Government was going to have a partisan, party political view on whether it would support it.

From the point of view of citizens and the complainant this denigrated their position. For a complainant to come forward in the first instance and to go through the process of making a complaint to the Ombudsman is quite a lengthy and stressful process. It was particularly traumatic for the Byrne family with regard to the lost at sea report. For the Government then to reject out of hand a report from an independent officer who is above politics, and to do so in such a partisan way within this House at the joint committee, suggested that the Fianna Fáil party decided it would trample all over that very institution. There was not even a recognition that the complaint had validity. Even if the amount of compensation to be offered was rejected, there should at least have been an acknowledgement of the faults on the Government side.

I speak on this motion as a person who received a mandate for the first time in 2007. This Parliament is ceasing to be relevant for ordinary citizens. The roof needs to be lifted or blown off so that a little light can be let in and the institution can be reformed. It will not take much to do so. With a little lateral thinking and cross-party consensus on how it can be done, we can restore this institution to some degree of relevance to ordinary people's lives. So long as the Executive continues to hold the power it does, this Parliament will die on its feet.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.