Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 59:

In page 24, subsection (3), line 19, to delete "shall" and substitute "shall, within 3 months of receiving it,".

I did not get the opportunity to speak. I did indicate I wished to speak. I have tabled a number of amendments in this grouping.

Amendment No. 59 requires that the Minister lay the report before the Oireachtas within a specified time period of three months. As discussed earlier, this is an important item since the Oireachtas will have time to debate the importance of issues contained therein. Unfortunately, the Minister has acted in bad faith in regard to reports of the inspector of prisons and places of detention in the past. I mentioned that matter on Second Stage. For example, during the past two years the Minister published Mr. Justice Kinlen's reports during the last week of the parliamentary term so that there was not time to schedule a debate on many important and not insignificant issues surrounding the management of our prisons. I would hate to see this type of disrespect for the Houses of the Oireachtas to become common place. Therefore I table this amendment to ensure the Minister's successors of whatever party would not act in the same way.

In respect of amendment No. 60, the doctoring of the inspector's report and the removal or omission of information that the inspector saw fit to include is too important a matter to be decided between the Minister and the Government's Secretary General. Rather, the decision should be taken by the Government and the collective responsibility should be applied to it.

Section 31(6) effectively prevents the inspector from examining a complaint from an individual prisoner. While I am not suggesting that responding to every prisoner's individual complaint should be one of the inspector's functions, I have tabled amendment No. 61 in order that the inspector's hands are not tied in any way. By way of this amendment he or she could examine issues raised by a prisoner and hence fulfil one of his or her important functions.

Amendment No. 62 creates a specific offence of failing to co-operate with the inspector. This is an important support framework for the inspector. Amendment No. 63 returns to the issue I have raised a number of times this afternoon. It is important there are statutory timescales within which the Minister must lay documents before the Houses of the Oireachtas. Without them it is too easy and convenient for Ministers to ignore the Oireachtas and either delay publications indefinitely or occasionally delay debates or prevent them from taking place on important issues such as those raised in the annual report of the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention. It would have been remiss if we had not reached these amendments and I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach.