Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It appears that the director of the Combat Poverty Agency should not comment on poverty, the director of FÁS should not comment on cutbacks in its budget, the director of a State funded research agency should not comment on cutbacks in research funding and the directors of institutes of technology, who are chief executives of essentially State bodies, should not criticise public policy. The extension of this logic is Stalinism. There is no other word to describe it. It is an undemocratic centralism and, incidentally, a philosophy which has characterised this State since its foundation – an authoritarian, hierarchical view of how society should be organised. This is relevant no matter which Government is in power.

What this country needs more than anything else is serious, intelligent debate about its problems. If every agency set up by the State is to be a mouthpiece for Government policy, precluded from criticising it, where does that leave, for example, the Central Bank? Will it be an exception or will there be an amendment in the next Bill saying that the Governor of the Central Bank should not criticise policy? It is traditional in our society that the Central Bank draws our attention to issues of public policy. The Minister is completely wrong on this and his suggestion is offensive to chief executives.

Incidentally, it is clear that the Minister has been in Government for the last number of years because today's Oireachtas committees are remarkably non-confrontational most of the time. They work very well by consensus, except when legislation is being dealt with – but if legislation is being dealt with there will be no chief executive officer of a State agency before the committee. The Minister should read the transcripts, for example, of the grilling received by the president of the Dublin Institute of Technology about its accounts. I mention this because I read it by accident. There was no sign of Government-Opposition division: some of the harshest criticism came from Opposition Members. The way committees function has nothing to do with Government and Opposition. If the Minister thinks they operate on this basis it is a reflection of the fact that he has not been a member of one for quite a while. They operate by consensus, with a small number of people from different backgrounds agreeing about issues worth pursuing. If issues of public policy come up, they do so in a quite unpartisan way.