Tom Parlon (Laois-Offaly, Progressive Democrats)

If someone is aggrieved by something a committee did or did not do and wants to take legal action, the decision on who he or she shall target or name as the defendant is taken by him or her in their summons, presumably on the advice of a lawyer. Normally the practice has been to list all the members of the committee and as a group committee members do not like it. It upsets them and their families. In all the versions of the Bill we tried to do something about it and we encountered one insuperable problem. The plaintiff had the call on who to name and the lawyers generally went for overkill in case they ignored a possible defendant whose inclusion might be beneficial to them. The best we could do, therefore, was to provide an alternative target who might prove attractive to them.

We spelt out in the version of the Bill before the House that it would not be necessary for a litigant to name all the committee members and that it would suffice to name the chair of the particular committee. The lawyers now feel that the explicit statement that it was not necessary to name all the committee members should be dropped and we should simply tell them it will suffice to go for the committee chair.

Amendment agreed to.

Government amendment No. 11:

In page 8, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following new paragraph:

"(c) In any legal proceedings referred to at paragraph (a)(ii), it shall not be necessary for the Commission to obtain an authorisation from–

(i) Dáil Éireann to conduct the defence of proceedings against members of a Committee appointed by Dáil Éireann,

(ii) Seanad Éireann to conduct the defence of proceedings against members of a Committee appointed by Seanad Éireann, or

(iii) Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann to conduct the defence of proceedings against members of a Committee appointed by Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann.".

This amendment, despite its size, follows from the requirement that the commission cannot act in a defence role without having the authorisation of a House or both Houses. It now caters for the one situation where that consent will not be necessary – where the committee which is having proceedings taken against it no longer exists. This is possible because a dissolution of the Dáil automatically terminates its committees and joint committees or because they had been abolished earlier.

Amendment agreed to.