Results 15,981-16,000 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: The last time.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: I heard Deputy Donnelly speak about this issue before and his own amendment is yet to come. There is almost a view that the Government side is, by definition, "partial" and the Opposition, by definition, is "impartial". I can assure the Deputies that this is not my experience of 30 years in the House. There can be very partial and partisan Opposition members with a political agenda, and...

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: I do not know about more money but the spending of money must be better in order to resource the committee system. That will require a change in mindset. There is an enormous volume of work undertaken at committee level that does not get a line anywhere but something abusive uttered in the plenary session would garner a headline. I do not have a simple solution to get attention for the...

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: What about a mischievous Opposition?

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy is an Independent in his first term and he does not understand how political parties work if he believes the Cabinet controls Members of the House with such alacrity.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: I understand the point the Deputy is making and I listened very carefully to his arguments on Second Stage. First, after the lack of success of the constitutional amendment we proposed last year, everything we are now doing must be anchored in constitutional authority. Article 15.10 of the Constitution, from which section 9 inquiries derive their constitutional authority, only regulates the...

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: That would be a fair victory, would it not?

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: It is a big penalty.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: If the committee drew up a report and found-----

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: If the committee came to a conclusion and found adversely, what would be demanded of the individual concerned? The resignation of the individual would be demanded. That would be the penalty demanded on foot of adverse findings. If that resignation came in advance of the issuing of the findings-----

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: No. One cannot, constitutionally, dismiss a Member of the House. All we can do, as we have done, is censure a Member.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: Yes, we can censure and ask the Member to resign. In the Deputy's scenario, if somebody resigns before the findings are issued, then the inquiry has succeeded in extracting the maximum penalty that could be achieved through exhortation.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: The Bill sets out a number of statutory functions which a committee must carry out. It certainly is not the intention that one would need a separate committee to carry out each function. For example, all of the functions set out in Parts 10 and 11, relating to private papers, confidential communications, official documents and so forth, would all be done, I would imagine, by the Committee...

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: The salient point is that we are talking about functions, not committees. The Bill provides that new statutory functions must be carried out in order to comply-----

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: Absolutely, but I did not want to set in stone that function X must be assigned to the CPP, while function Y must be assigned to the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions, and so forth. The functions should be farmed out to the relevant committees by the Oireachtas.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: No, I do not think so.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: I have talked to the Parliamentary Counsel about this issue and the advice was that we must say that these functions must be assigned to "a committee". There is no reference to a new committee. The functions must be assigned to a committee of the House. It is for the Oireachtas to determine how many committees will be involved and to dissolve or create new committees, as it sees fit....

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: Section 6 makes provision for an inquiry limited to recording and reporting evidence and making findings of uncontested fact. The witnesses are called and the evidence presented is reported. We must remain within the confines of the Abbeylara judgment. We cannot find adverse facts against somebody who is not constitutionally amenable to the Oireachtas. The view is that this is as far as...

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: We are looking at the grounds of constitutional authority for inquiries. These relate to the legislative function. In essence the findings that would be permissible under this section would be systems issues as opposed to findings against an individual. The findings that could be made in a section 7 inquiry are that certain functions do not operate well.

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform: Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Bill 2013: Committee Stage (5 Jun 2013)

Brendan Howlin: Through the Chair, Deputy, that is a very sensible question. I am now thinking out loud. I said there would probably be two parts to the inquiry. First, we inquire into what happened. Since one cannot make adjudicatory decisions on the conduct of an individual, that will be an "inquire, record, report"-type inquiry. I believe there is a possibility - but this depends on the view of the...