Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Without re-opening old wars regarding the Freedom of Information Act, the former Information Commissioner chose to use a report as a mechanism to get across some views to the Oireachtas in ways which stretched things to the very limit of the actual phraseology of the statute. I will not put it any further than that.

This is a standard provision which is to be found in legislation covering the establishment of statutory bodies such as the ombudsman commission. Other bodies that are similarly covered include, believe it or not, the Human Rights Commission, the Ombudsman for Children and the Equality Authority. The purpose of this section is to allow members of the Committee of Public Accounts the opportunity to question the commission on its accounts. While it is clearly open to Oireachtas committees to discuss any matters relevant to the terms of reference, the intention behind the revision is to ensure that committee members do not seek to draw the commission into discussion on matters of public policy in such a setting.

The reason for the provision is because politics is a competitive business and clearly it would be hugely advantageous to somebody who disagreed with a Government policy to recruit important independent bodies to his or her cause. I have no doubt that if we did not have this kind of provision for the Human Rights Commission, people would call it in to say something along the lines of, "Don't you agree with me that what the Minister, Deputy McDowell, is doing is wrong." In those circumstances the commission would be drawn into conflict because some of its interrogators at these committees would have a political interest in recruiting its members, so to speak, to their cause. It is better that bodies, in the context of being accountable to the Oireachtas, would stay out of day-to-day politics and would not get sucked into such policy debates.

The point was made yesterday that they are free to comment on Opposition policies, which I suppose is true. However, they are very unlikely to do so or to be asked to do so, in so far as the Opposition has policies.