Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

That is the track record and it does not augur well for the future. How he conducts the business of his party is entirely a matter for Deputy Martin. However, as far as a new agenda is concerned it seems to me that there is very much an old agenda and nothing has really changed.

A number of points were raised. Deputy Pringle wanted to know whether the Government would demonstrate good faith and introduce a Bill to impose costs on those who obstructed tribunals. That is not necessary. As most Deputies in the House will know, it is a matter for the sole member to make a decision about costs and no doubt he will make that decision in due course. It is not my business to seek to influence him but no legislation is necessary to give him the powers Deputy Pringle seeks.

Deputy Calleary wanted to address the question of inquiry by parliamentary committee and since the Deputy intended it in good faith I am not going to ask why he did not do much when he was on this side of the House. Many years have passed since the Abbeylara judgment. I do not want to keep picking on Deputy Martin but I cannot see any other faces on the other side of the House who were in the last Government.

In all the years since the judgment there has been no attempt to refurbish the law on inquiry by parliamentary committee. Everyone in the House knows there were very particular reasons for the Abbeylara judgment. Most people in the House know that there is a question mark over the wisdom of the inquiry having been embarked on in the first place by parliamentarians because it came hot in the wake of the DIRT tribunal. The issues involved in tax evasion in the DIRT inquiry were completely different from a case where a man died.

It is not a matter for parliamentarians to adjudicate on the killing, lawful or otherwise, of a man in those circumstances. In any event, the Abbeylara judgment struck down, in a very particular way and within a very definite rubric, inquiry by parliamentary committee. We have been waiting for the best part of ten years to see the law refurbished on that and it has not happened. This Government has agreed to do it.

Deputy Calleary pleaded for a committee system that is less plentiful than that of the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, where anybody who did not get a chocolate sweet as a Minister of State became chairman of a committee. It is not the best basis for establishing a committee structure. Deputy Calleary recommended that there ought to be a more considered approach to the committee architecture on this occasion. There is no doubt in my mind that a lot of the work done by many of the committees established by the former Government and the one before it was immensely good.

When our friends in the media criticise this House, they should note that they have not reformed themselves much. They are not in a position to cover much of the work done in many of the committees. For example, most of the media makes arrangements to cover the Committee on Public on Accounts but they are not geared up to cover all of the committees in the House. They would see that immensely good work is done, notwithstanding the proliferation that happened under the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. I am satisfied that it would show this House in a good light if the committee system was re-established with a purpose, such as that which Deputy Calleary had in mind.

I do not think that any Member of this House believed that he or she would see the day where there was agreement between the parties on the banning of corporate donations. I do not believe that any Member of this House would have thought that such a sea change would have happened in Irish politics. I do not know what happened in the previous Government. The Green Party element of the previous Government pledged that it would introduce a Bill to ban corporate donations. It is still where it was, in the ether. The previous Government never enacted it and that is the test.

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