Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 June 2003

Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Bill 2002: Second Stage.

 

I have looked very closely at what happens in other places – previous speakers have mentioned some of them. We should consider how various other parliaments do their business. The New Zealand Parliament has an interesting approach. Every member has two secretarial staff, one in Parliament and the other in his or her constituency. That is completely unrelated to research, however. Senator Higgins spoke about this and he was absolutely right. In some parliaments I have examined in the course of preparing reports, there are support structures based around the library and research system so that a person who must deliver a major speech or give some input to a committee can, within 24 hours or less, have academically researched, non-politically biased information. That is what we should be striving for.

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