Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I presume I am getting injury time for this as well.

I was about to refer to the review of the budgetary process, one with which I have been intimately involved over the past five years. We tried to change it. The comprehensive review of expenditure laid out all the expenditure options in each area. I then wrote personally to the chairman of each committee to ask them to examine the expenditure options before any budget was formed. At a time when we were reducing expenditure, it is understandable that this level of engagement may not have happened. However, that process was there.

The election is over. Deputy Micheál Martin need not misrepresent what happened with Supplementary Estimates at the end of last year. They were introduced for very good reasons, namely, to validate expenditure we had announced right throughout the year when we had the moneys, including expenditure on the waiting lists initiative and the summer works scheme, as well as reducing the time for the fair deal scheme. These were all announced well in advance of last summer. These were not matters added on at the end of the year as Deputy Micheál Martin suggested.

He is right to the extent that we need to further reform the budgetary process and not have the big surprise day with everybody making a secret announcement. We need to have an inclusive debate as to how we spend moneys, along with an enlarged agreement across the House on that.

It will not be lost on the public that, in all the talk about Dáil reform, the most fundamental duty which we have to fulfil is a requirement to hold the Government to account. This House is the primary instrument for doing that. It holds the Executive to account. Accordingly, to facilitate that accountability, the Opposition is resourced differently from those parties or Members which support the Government. For that reason, I have some concerns about the proposal to modify the Technical Group and membership agreements until we see what shape the next Government will be. The resources and time available to parties supportive of the Government cannot be identical to those of the groupings holding it to account. I am referring to the notion that one can be a hybrid of Government but also of Opposition.

When I raised this at the committee, I was told it worked in the Seanad. The Seanad is fundamentally different, however. In one of its key roles, it is not constitutionally obliged to hold the Government to account. We will see how that works out. However, if they are going to fulfil the requirement to hold government to account as a fundamental issue, it will be difficult to come to any conclusions on the structure of groups or their resourcing until we see the shape of the next Government.

I recall instances in the previous Dáil when Opposition Deputies objected to parliamentary questions being put by members of the Government parties because they claimed it was eating into their time. There was a legitimacy about that concern when one remembers the significant number of Deputies supportive of the previous Government. We have to get our heads around the notion that we are all equal in here, however. It is an entitlement of every Deputy to ask parliamentary questions and to have time to debate. If we are talking about easing the Whip system, then not every Member should be captured by the letter that is down, even with the least nuanced differences within Government. At the end of the day, every Member supporting the Government is required to support it in votes on amendments and legislation. It would be useful if we were open to allow differences of views to be expressed in this House without it being a fundamental rift in the Government. That is a maturing we all need to do.

We must look at the more diffuse Parliament of which we are now Members. We must allocate speaking times and supports to groups without affecting the larger groups. I heard the demand in the committee for perfect proportionality. Getting that balance right is going to be very difficult. We are going to have much more debate. The previous Dáil was very productive with over 250 Bills enacted. Although we are a House of debate, we are also a House of decisions. We must not have such structures that make it impossible to come to decisions on important issues within reasonable time. It is important those Members who support the Government have, by definition, greater access to the Executive and to the support structures it provides. This is an advantage that accrues to them. Accordingly, there is a need for rebalancing for those who do not have those support structures. That has always been the way with financial resources. It will also have to be the case with how we structure the business of the House.

If the critique of how we previously ordered our business is about the effectiveness of the Dáil at holding the Executive to account, it is not clear to me how the proposals governing the recognition of technical groups will facilitate that now, but that is something that is a work in progress within the sub-committee. The one thing we do not want to do is to make matters worse and have less capacity, than we currently have, to hold the Executive to account.

By definition we have many reforms to present. Not all of them will work and some of them will be revisited after a period. I am very strongly of the view of the "suck it and see" variety in that we need to do it to see whether it works and to be open to changing our minds if it patently does not work. With respect to the reformed sitting day, the disaggregation of plenary and committee work and the structure of the Opposition to allow for groups to be formed, particularly of like-minded people working together to a common objective and a common platform, all of this potentially will be transformative in a way that all of us will welcome.

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