Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House. He published this important Bill more than 18 months ago and none of us should underestimate its significance. If this Bill is embraced and the newly established commissions that will investigate matters of public concern in the future are successful, we will have turned a corner in terms of providing a non-judicial form of inquiry which will be outside parliament and outside the courts but will still provide satisfactory results for the public and politicians.

I am a great believer in parliamentary inquiries. There is considerable scope within the judgment on Abbeylara as to what politicians can inquire into. We clearly cannot make findings of fact against individuals. However, we can make recommendations in connection with general policy matters. Too often we have underestimated the role and significance of parliamentary inquiries within our democracy. In the first instance, they are cross-party inquiries, which overcome the type of party-political backbiting that goes on in this and the other House. Second, they are a very cheap way of doing serious work. Senator Jim Walsh's work with the justice committee in the context of the Barron report resulted in the publication of a very good report in a very short time and cost a very small amount of money. We should look at the potential of parliamentary inquiries that the Abbeylara judgment gives us. Politicians have too often said that the Abbeylara judgment dilutes parliamentary inquiries. It does in some respects, but in other respects it points a way to the future.

I understand the Government can, by resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas, establish a commission of investigation. The benefit of this commission is that it will do its work in private, call its witnesses, seek orders to ensure people attend and seek orders to ensure that papers are delivered. At the end of that process, it can make a recommendation for a full-blooded tribunal, it can simply hand over the matters it has found to the authorities for a criminal investigation or it can report back to the Oireachtas. That is the flexibility we need. Our big problem to date has been that almost all tribunals have been in public. That is the great dilemma. Once something is in public, the costs of the tribunal inevitably increase. This is because people want their reputations upheld, believe they have a right to cross-examine witnesses who say adverse things about them and have a right to uphold their good names.

By giving flexibility, which the Bill does, to the various commissions that are established, we will be doing a good service because we will be giving people the power to make the common sense judgments they need to make. If one reads the fourth interim report from Judge Mahon on his tribunal, it is a cry for help. We established the terms of reference of the Flood tribunal and we made an absolute hames of it. In the last term of reference, we opened up any other matter that is brought to the attention of the tribunal. This means that by compulsion it must investigate everything. It cannot make the common sense judgments that all of us make in our daily lives because it does not have the power to do so. The commission will now ensure that such a common sense approach will be taken.

Judge Mahon's report is a cry for help. We all have an obligation to change the terms of reference, to give the tribunal the power to get on with its work and to make the distinction between significance and insignificance. While we want everything to be out in the open, the dilemma is that it is very costly and it automatically ensures rebuttal and cross-examination. It also has to be said that if a person makes an allegation against another individual, it is not fair that such an allegation is allowed to be in the public arena for months or years without the named individual having the chance to rebut the allegation. That is not fair in any normal democracy and it has to be addressed.

The role of star witnesses is another issue to be addressed. If one is performing publicly at these tribunals, one thinks of the headlines that will appear the next day. The headlines determine what is going on at the tribunal. It is another downside to the public side of the tribunal. It would be much easier to gather information and come to speedy conclusions if it was in private. It would also be at less cost to the taxpayer.

The Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Lenihan, stated that the commitment towards the new commission approach came as the result of the allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests in the Dublin dioceses. One of the women who bravely took this matter into the public arena was a constituent of mine called Marie Collins. She has asked, through her group, that the very first commission to be established once the Bill goes through both Houses should look at the Dublin dioceses. This would be done in private to find out exactly if additional inquiries need to take place. That commitment was given when the Minister first mooted the proposal. Is it the intention of the Government that it would be the first commission?

I agree with Senator Terry that in giving the Government the power to make the resolution, we are giving it significant power. It would have been preferable if an all-party committee established a resolution before both Houses and gave possession of the commission to both Houses of the Oireachtas, rather than to the Government. One of the benefits of a tribunal is that it is, by and large, an animal of the Oireachtas rather than of the Government. We could do a disservice to the commission by ensuring that it is only established on resolution of the Government and not of the Houses in general.