Joe O'Toole (Independent)

That suits my comments. I see the need for a committee such as the proposed sub-committee. I look forward to proposing my colleague Senator Rónán Mullen to represent the independent group on the sub-committee.

As long as we ask the people to give a single answer to seven different questions, we will never get the answer we seek. We must contrive, find, invent or develop a way to have six different questions on six different issues as part of the same constitutional referendum. This is the only way to find out where people stand on these matters. We are creating a concert of opposition with the current approach. Some seven different people will have seven different reasons to oppose the treaty and will vote together accordingly. I do not have a difficulty with the motion to extend the Orders of Reference of the Select Committee on European Affairs by extending the membership or to do the work outlined to which I look forward. However, the following step is wrong. The Dáil has made mistake and acted ultra vires. The people who opposed the referendum looked for every sliver of information and every angle to come back at us. I believe we are now handing them ammunition to use against us and I will tell the Minister of State the reason. First, the only people who can appoint a sub-committee are the members of a committee and, second, the members of a sub-committee must, in all cases, by any set of conventions I have ever seen, be members of the main committee. Otherwise, a special committee must be set up, which is different. Perhaps that is what the Minister should be doing in this regard. We are not setting up a special committee; we are a parent committee setting up a sub-committee.

Regarding the Standing Orders of this House, and as far as I know they are the same in the other House, under Standing Order 69 we can establish a select committee. This House did that in October 2007 when we established the Joint Committee on European Affairs. The motion stated that the Joint Committee shall have the powers defined in Standing Order 70(1) to (9) inclusive. Standing Order 70(3) gives the committee "power to appoint sub-Committees and to refer to such sub-Committees any matter comprehended by its orders of reference ...". It is clearly within the remit of the Joint Committee on European Affairs to set up a sub-committee of the nature the Minister is talking about to do the job he has asked it to do. There is no doubt about that.

I am 21 years a Member of this House and the Minister has been a Member for nearly as long, if not as long — I cannot recall but we have shared time here together — and in all that time I have never heard of nor seen either House appoint a sub-committee of another committee. We always appoint a select committee. The Department of Foreign Affairs has tried to get around that today in various ways and it has failed to do it. Establishing two select sub-committees to come together in a joint sub-committee has never been done before and it contravenes the Standing Orders of the House. Under Standing Order 69 the Seanad may devolve to a committee any power it so wishes.

We have set up a committee with the power to establish sub-committees and to do all the Minister has asked it to do. This House can establish a select committee to do what he asks us to do. We do not have that power, nor does the Dáil, but nobody in the Dáil reads the rules, as I well know. They always do what they are told. They never read the rules. The Minister's adviser from the Department of Foreign Affairs is smiling because he knows I am right about that. The Members in that House do what they are told. They are like children. This concerns a select committee, however, and we cannot do it.

The Department of Foreign Affairs knew what it was doing because sub-section (2) of the motion on the Order Paper states that the sub-committee, the one we are trying to establish, "shall have the powers defined in Standing Order 70(1), (2) and (4) to (9) inclusive" but there is no reference to Standing Order (3). Did we ever see that before? The sub-committee we are establishing today, unlike any committee we have ever established in our time, does not have the power to establish a sub-committee. It is the only power it is not given, which means that somebody knew what was going on and they took the power to do that.

The Minister may believe he can get this issue through on a vote of the House but it is not that simple. I have no difficulty with the first motion but in the second motion the Minister is asking us to do something we do not have the power to do. He may still vote it through the House but that does not make it right. A minority with courage is the majority on his own. That is the way I look at these matters.