Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

If I could briefly indicate a negative attitude towards this amendment, there may be occasions when reports come to hand in regard to which the two Governments may decide, for one reason or another, that to publish them within a month would not be helpful to the whole process. Obviously I would hope that the great majority of reports would not be in that category but there may be occasions when it is necessary to act in that way and the advice available to me, which I believe is correct, is that it would be foolish to tie myself down to a situation of that kind in circumstances where there could be unforeseen adverse consequences. Whereas I fully agree with the Senator that it is generally preferable that timeframes be put on reports, many reports from many sources under statute appear to take a good deal of time before they come before the Houses of the Oireachtas. This is one in which there is a genuine, as opposed to a spurious, interest of the Executive in allowing some degree of flexibility because I can imagine circumstances in which it would be decided that a particular report was not to be published within time.