Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

During the debate on the IBRC commission report on Siteserv the Taoiseach indicated that the commission was due to submit a report before the end of October on the other 37 transactions. Could he update us on that?

As my colleague, Deputy Nash, pointed out during Dáil statements in September, there is a broader issue here where investigations under the Commissions of Investigations Act cannot serve a useful purpose if they cannot be completed within a reasonable timeframe and arrive at the truth in an effective and expeditious manner. Given that the evidence they gather is not admissible in similar criminal proceedings, they were supposed to be effective, efficient truth-finding mechanisms. Also, given how long the report has taken on just this one aspect, reading the report could be said to be like examining a long-buried time capsule with a story from long ago. If it is taking too long to get to the truth, and if we cannot use the commissions of investigation in an expeditious manner then we must ask if there is a case for a different sort of process to uncover or investigate the sort of issues the commission on Siteserv was set up to do. There is a genuine public concern about the length of time taken and the difficulty of getting to the truth through this mechanism, which we must recall was supposed to be an effective, efficient and expeditious version of the previous tribunals of inquiry mechanism. What is the preferred mechanism for such investigations in future?

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