Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The importance of the Seanad in scrutinising and initiating legislation has been shown vividly in recent times. The personal insolvency legislation was amended 181 times on Committee Stage and 155 times on Report Stage in this House, as the Minister, Deputy Shatter, engaged with Members. Yesterday, we reached 64 amendments on the Taxi Regulation Bill. It was remarkable that on a number of occasions the Minister of State did not move his own amendments because he was listening to what the House was saying. That is important for the role of the second Chamber. We also have Senator Colm Burke's important work on uninsured doctors practising medicine, and Senator Crown's work on the danger to children of adults smoking in cars. We need to initiate legislation as well as scrutinising Government legislation.

Two senior civil servants recently wrote that "Officials should be encouraged to act as effective devil's advocates and this role should be positively reflected in the performance reviews". That does not tend to happen, however. The importance of a second Chamber, to have this scrutiny where the Government has a very large Dáil majority, has been illustrated.

There is one area for improvement and I ask the Leader to take it up with the Minister of State, Deputy Paul Kehoe, who brings the legislative programme to the House. We need a higher standard of regulatory impact assessments. Sometimes, they do not appear at all, while sometimes they are posted on Department websites but are not furnished to Members. When they are put on the websites, many of them are inadequate. Perhaps, therefore, the Leader could ask the Minister of State to attend the House to say what he requires for regulatory impact assessments to assist us in that vital role of the second House.

In the Irish Independent today, Professor Anton Murphy states that proper screening of credit requires educated and well-informed bankers who know the broad potential of different areas of the economy. As we have seen, many had very limited mindsets. I ask the Leader to arrange for the need to improve the standard of auditing and accounting as we try to get the economy back to the job creation era, which Senators Bacik and Mooney have just mentioned. We need to reform banking. There seem to be banking people who did about ten minutes work and then played golf with builders all day. They did serious damage to this country. I ask the Leader to arrange for the Minister for Finance to attend the House to say what he thinks banks should do, bearing in mind the entirely credible criticisms of bankers and their education by Professor Murphy.