Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 June 2003

Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Bill 2002: Second Stage.

 

Anyone who has been to Capitol Hill will be aware that they have the Library of Congress with a staff of hundreds available to members. If one wants research done on a subject on which one will be speaking that evening and one asks for it in the morning, it will be supplied. That is on a different scale and I am not suggesting we replicate the Library of Congress as that is impossible. Nevertheless, there is an inadequacy here and it will have to be attended to. One of the effects of that inadequacy is to give a disproportionate power to lobbyists. They can produce facts, figures and propositions that we are not in a position to challenge or analyse properly due to the absence of an empirical, independent back up. It is an important issue.

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