David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, although I do so in a muted fashion. I know him of old; he is a thoroughly decent, upright and competent man, but it is a disgrace that he should be placed in this position. Perhaps the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has an input, but I cannot imagine what it might be. It is most invidious to place the Minister of State in this position. When Senator O'Toole asked a question, the advisers had to come into play. That is ridiculous. When we asked if the Department had access to this important document from the Information Commissioner, the Minister of State in charge did not have a clue. Of course he did not; I cannot expect him to because it is not his Department. It is an outrage that when we are discussing a serious matter such as this the senior Minister involved is off gallivanting after the nags. In the circumstances, the title of the Bill is a complete misnomer; it should be called The Glorious Uncertainty of the Turf Bill, the Turf Accountants Bill 2003 or something like that. It is a complete and utter farce.

Senator O'Toole made an extremely important and serious point. Within the terms of the Bill there is a statutory position allocated to the Information Commissioner. In the conduct of this debate the Minister of State is trampling upon and treating it with contempt.

We heard from Senator Mansergh that there were five distinguished independent persons and so on. They were senior civil servants for which they are entitled to respect but I would not regard them as totally independent. The Information Commissioner is of at least comparable rank within the Civil Service. Therefore, he certainly knows what he is talking about, yet we are having this debate in the absence of his report. When somebody raised a query about it, my colleague, Senator Mansergh, said that he had done this. He may have but the person in charge of the debate in this House on behalf of the Government does not know anything about it. We have not had access to it. We do not know anything about it and do not believe it has been published. It is a little too glib to say he has done it; he has produced one report but we do not have the one for the current year, the one being talked about. If this is the way in which the Government treats information in terms of the Seanad debate, the people have considerable need to be worried.

In terms of the conduct of the debate, there may be some examples of that very Hibernian phenomenon, the digression, in the contributions and perhaps the more academically tinged on the other side may wonder at this—