Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I support everything Senator Brian Hayes said except his remarks on benchmarking on which we have a long recorded difference. The fundamental problem with benchmarking was that many of the participants in the private sector demanded that all the records be destroyed because they did not want what they regarded as confidential information about wages to enter the public domain.

Senator Brian Hayes is right to say that it is important for trade unions in the public sector to recognise that their function is to serve the public. This should not have to be said but it is sometimes ignored. If one starts from that position one can negotiate all sorts of deals which are reasonable.

Social partnership has depoliticised everything of significance. The natural instinct of that most suppliant of public bodies, RTE, is to ask the Government and a social partner to debate issues while the Opposition is left fulminating on the sidelines. It is rare to hear Opposition members giving the first reaction to the Government decision. That is profoundly wrong. The Oireachtas needs to reappropriate ownership — not control — of this process. For example, the 15 Members who are members of the forum should be set up as an Oireachtas joint committee on the partnership process, with the same powers as all other Oireachtas committees to require these agencies to report to it about the partnership process.

I support the amendment and believe it would advance the process of returning democratic accountability to centre stage, instead of the relationship between Government and other interest groups in which the Oireachtas, the most fundamental of our democratic institutions, is marginalised.