Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Senator O’Brien that the cost of various commissions of inquiry is a matter of concern but I have already acknowledged that a previous Government established a much better model of inquiry. I think Michael McDowell was the Minister for Justice and Equality who, in 2004, established the Commissions of Investigation Act, which has been a dramatic improvement on the very costly system of long-running tribunals of inquiry that had gone before it. This Government attempted to ensure that Oireachtas committees would have powers of compellability, fact-finding and so forth but the public rejected that in a referendum. The banking inquiry will have to operate under the constraints set out by the Supreme Court.