Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State refers to valuable scientific advice that is not yet written. I do not know what this is. The present Minister of State is unlikely to have to have to refer to me for advice, nevertheless, Ministers should ask for advice to be written down. How can they act on advice that is not written and the person offering the advice will not write it down for some reason? This theme ran all through the banking inquiry. If the issue is removed from banking, and this is a general point for my parliamentary colleagues, it becomes about the need to bring the practice of public administration into a 21st century framework. It has far wider implications than what happened to the State when it received a bill for €64 billion from the banks. People should be required to keep a record.

During the debate on Committee Stage the Government did not want the term "publication" included because scientific journals were too slow. Now it does not want advice even written on the back of an envelope. No record at all will exist. Policy making and policy making for the environment must be taken much more seriously than that. One of the lessons from the collapse of the State and in having to go to the IMF is the failure to reform the permanent government. The Oireachtas has failed in its role in this regard. The ways in which decisions are made have not been reformed and we are still condoning advice in which the adviser is not willing to write it down. Are we to speculate that the adviser has not got enough confidence to put it in writing? Or is he or she a cute hoor who is escaping or avoiding responsibility and landing the Minister in trouble by deliberately not writing it down and afterwards saying, "I told the Minister that"? I believe that Ministers deserve better than people who previously did not want to rely on academic journals and who now do not want to write the advice down. Writing is an old skill which should be within the realm of Government advisers and administrators. It is almost Neanderthal that people would refuse to write something down.