Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are always reforming. The only reform we can have is a tightening of the legal representation. People have constitutional rights in these matters. To put it bluntly, there would be a revolution if we were to embark on another tribunal that could take a decade, as some of them did. That was convenient for people. I sat in these Houses during a decade or more of inquiries when personages were still involved at the core of political life but we could not raise the issue in the Oireachtas because it was all going on somewhere else. That would be acceptable if a tribunal sat for a month, six months or even a year but the notion that normal political business has to carry on in a vacuum while somewhere else that sort of inquiry was going on is not fit for purpose. To add insult to injury, we got a bill for enormous sums of money at the end.