Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Nobody will be press-ganged into service against his or her wishes. If Senator Kett's reading was open, I would certainly insert "with that person's consent". I do not in any sense want to shove a person into something that he or she does not want to be in. There are well-established procedures in that regard.

The provision under section 64(2) underscores the point. Any voluntary staff transfers would also have to be considered in the context of proposals for decentralisation, which is another issue that arises in this regard. There are practical considerations that have to do with the provision of expertise to the ombudsman commission during its initial start-up phase. If the commission is to get under way at all, it requires to have working for it people with at least a vague idea of what is involved, rather than staff being brought in absolutely cold, on a given Monday, to be faced with an entirely new taskload. The commission has the power, in due course, to advertise and recruit its own staff. Provision is made for it to do that under section 63.

I want to stress that we are talking about the performance of administrative functions involving people who know what it is like to receive a complaint and how to process it. It would be a mistake to throw such experience and expertise on to the dump heap just to symbolise that this is a new start. The alternative view is that this body would effectively spend months trying to find its feet and attempting to set up administrative techniques, making mistakes which others, perhaps, have made in the past without having available to it any personal knowledge of the pitfalls as regards where it could be going wrong. I believe the administrative staff should be capable, with their own consent, of being transferred, but that the commission should be the ultimate arbiter on who serves it. That is an aspect of independence that is critical. It is not a case of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform stipulating that only certain staff may be used all of whom must be his or her nominees. That would undermine the commission.

This is an enabling section the purpose of which is to attempt to get the various functions of the ombudsman commission operating as quickly as possible and to avoid a situation where the establishment of the commission would be followed by a period of inactivity while inexperienced administrators struggled to set up filing systems and methods of dealing with complaints, etc. I agree with Senator Cummins that we do not want old wine in new bottles. On the other hand, we do not want to pour the wine we have down the sink.