Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

If Deputy Ó Fearghaíl would allow me to continue, he might find that I will willingly acknowledge that without a prompt.

The points I make were underlined by the fact that not one but two Fianna Fáil Deputies from my constituency were accorded full membership of the committee by the Taoiseach of the day. Let us be under no illusion. That was against the backdrop of serious actions on the part of the Government of the day and the Department of Health and Children in terms of acute hospital services in the north east. That same Taoiseach approved an extension of the committee's membership to accommodate a second representative of another political party, but no accommodation was made for this Deputy or my party in terms of membership of the committee.

I record my thanks to the former Chairmen of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children and to the committee secretariat which facilitated me in attending and contributing to meetings and keeping my office up to date on committee work, despite the fact that I was not a committee member. It is a very important point that every Deputy and Senator is entitled to full membership of a committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas. As recently as the previous Dáil, that was not honoured.

I have referred to this experience not as a gripe, but to make the point that there needs to be absolute fairness in the allocation of committee membership to all Deputies and Senators. I urge the new Government to be fair and equitable in its allocation of committee places and to accommodate all Members of the Houses in a manner respectful of their respective mandates.

In the past the positions of Chairs of Oireachtas committees have been doled out — some would say as goodies — to favoured Government backbenchers and to so-called Independent Deputies who supported the Government by one means or another. I recall one individual, whom I will not name, who was awarded a committee Chair. I will not put a tooth in it. He was clearly incapable of the duties required of him. This ballyhoo must end; I witnessed it personally. Committee Chairs should be allocated proportionally on the basis of party strength or from among Independent Members. They should be allocated to competent Oireachtas Members who have a particular interest in the area of responsibility and who can properly fulfil the role entrusted them. There should be no additional remuneration attached to the position of committee Chairman. It should be an honour to take up such a position, which does not necessarily have to run for the duration of the Dáil of five years. The position could be rotated.

If the Oireachtas had long ago instituted a proper system of investigation by committees we might have been spared much of the huge expense and long duration of the tribunals. I welcome the new Government's commitment to amend the Constitution to give such powers to committees. Between 2002 and 2007, the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, of which I was a member, conducted an investigation into customer charges and interest rates set by the commercial banks in this State. Its report was published in June 2005 and exposed how ordinary customers were being ripped off by the banks. The very fact that an Oireachtas committee had to carry out that investigation in the first place showed the failure of the Central Bank to carry out its duties and proper regulatory role. We now know this was only the tip of the iceberg of gross profiteering by the banks and gross negligence by the so-called regulators, those who were given the responsibility of oversight in respect of the banking institutions. The institutions' crimes — I mean crimes absolutely — were facilitated and encouraged by previous Governments and have brought the economy of this State to the edge of complete ruin. We have yet to see anyone held accountable before the courts for this real crime against citizens, who are suffering daily as a consequence of neglect or willful participation in the activities I have described.

Considering the role of Oireachtas committees is not an academic exercise. The function of the Dáil is to hold to account the Government it elects from among its number. We may well ask if a more empowered and vigilant Oireachtas could have held Governments more effectively to account, particularly in the past decade and a half, thus helping to avoid the worst excesses that led to the current economic nightmare.

It is often said that Dáil committees are expensive and ineffectual. They should represent no additional cost other than that associated with the provision of the supports they need. They represent an integral part of our responsibilities as elected representatives of our respective constituencies. Committees should not be ineffectual. The only way they can be effective is if the Government takes heed of their work and not only notes but also acts upon, in all reasonableness, recommendations made by them. This is related to my earlier appeal in regard to this debate.

I recently served on the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, which is a case in point. It came up with wording on the constitutional amendment on children that received all-party support after holding more than 60 meetings over approximately two years. There was some cost in terms of the legal supports provided. On many occasions since the publication of that committee's third report, at the outset of last year, I asked the last Government and the Minister of State with responsibility for children what progress had been made on the wording recommended by all parties. I asked whether there would be a referendum in 2010. It was like trying to extract teeth from an unwilling patient in a dental surgery; it was impossible to obtain absolute clarity. I appeal to the new Government, as I did last week, to move now towards accepting the wording all parties have agreed on after protracted hearings, discussions and negotiations. That is the only logical outcome of the committee's work. Otherwise, its report, like so many others produced by Oireachtas committees, will sit on a shelf and never be acted upon. I hope and expect that the Government will shortly confirm, very likely on the formal setting up of the new Department of Children and the appointment of Deputy Frances Fitzgerald as the Minister at its helm, that a date for a referendum will be set this year.

The Abbeylara judgment was very disappointing and negative and has had very serious consequences for the relevance of Dáil committees since it was issued. It has certainly impaired the opportunity that might have been available to many Oireachtas committees to carry out necessary investigative work. I hope that matter will be addressed this year to give teeth and opportunity to the committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas to play once again the part they can quite rightly play. In carrying out this function, they could save the State considerable sums of money.

I hope the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, will relay some of my points to her colleagues in Government arising from today's discussions.

See this speech in context