Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by acknowledging and thanking Senator Ó Céidigh for all the tremendous work he has done in drafting this Bill and presenting it to the House and the rationale he has offered for the legislation. I had an opportunity to discuss this with the Senator earlier in the week. I agree with much of the work in the Bill but, as the Senator will be aware, I am not in a position to accept it, and I will outline the reasons for that in a moment. I also thank Senators Horkan, Gavan, Kelleher, McDowell, Bacik and Mulherin for the perspectives they have offered on the Bill. I hope I included all those who contributed.

As I listened to everybody speak, I was lamenting the fact I cannot speak Latin because if I could, the insight I would be looking to offer is who watches the watchmen. That cuts to the core of the issue the Senator is raising in this Bill. That question and the answering of it is covered in sections 10 and 13 that cut to the core of the work the Senator is asking this agency to do. Section 10 lays out the primary functions of this agency while section 13 lays out the powers the Senator believes the agency will need for the functions of the Bill to be discharged. That cuts to the core of the issue for me. If one looks at the functions of the agency the Senator prescribes, I respectfully contend to him that the body best placed to do that work is Government itself and the Departments of Government.Let us look at the powers the agency needs in order to allow the information-gathering and the need to appoint authorised persons to happen. If those needs are so great for this agency to fulfil that role, the organisation that is best placed to do this work in the first place may actually be the relevant Department. I will set out the two reasons for my belief it would not be right for the Seanad to pass this Bill, despite my agreement with many of the objectives Senator Ó Céidigh has outlined.

The first is that if one State agency had the role of overseeing the work of another State agency, there would be the very challenge of breadth that Senator Bacik outlined, as well as a question of legitimacy. If a Department and the Oireachtas have decided that a particular agency is needed, the capacity to review the operation of that agency surely should sit with the parental Department that is creating that agency, rather than with another agency created to do it. In my own experience, and I have articulated this view to Senator Ó Céidigh, if we want to get beyond a review and to actually act on its recommendations, the only body that can ever do that is a Department. If we decide that a review raises issues that need to be acted upon and made happen, that power is too important to be relegated to another body that is not the Department that sponsors that agency.

The second reason, which has been touched on in the contributions of other Senators, relates to the accountability of the agency, were it to make a recommendation about another agency that became a cause for public debate, disquiet or approval. The reason I think we, by and large, have a good structure already in place is that when, as was raised by another Senator, there is disquiet or a debate over the work of an agency, it is aired, settled and ultimately decided on within the Oireachtas through the Estimates, decisions and policy debates. Somebody has to be accountable for that. I strongly argue that we are in a better place when there is a single line of accountability through a Minister, as opposed to another agency doing the work.

As a background to that, I will conclude on three broad areas. The first area is the progress that has been made to date. The second area is the progress that has been made within the particular sectors. Not everybody will agree that it is progress. That is why it needs to be embedded in a democratic approach. The third area is the articulation of two other ways by which I believe an objective like this can be achieved, as I cannot accept this Bill for the reasons outlined. To begin with the progress made, as has been acknowledged by Senators, there have been changes in this area. A total of 143 State bodies have either been disbanded or merged into other bodies and 62 bodies have been combined into 27 new bodies. Senator McDowell asked why different organisations are in charge of their own payroll and why was the process not centralised. It has already happened. It is already in place through a centralised payroll section in my own Department, PeoplePoint, which is a single agency that handles payments for wages, pensions and other items of public expenditure centrally. I hope that we will have the statutory authority to make that happen in 2017 in order that it will be a body with its own legal basis to carry out its work. That is already in place and already happens.

Let us look at the sectoral effects of what that rationalisation has meant. An example of housing was raised. The Affordable Housing Partnership, the National Building Agency and the Centre for Housing Research are now merged into the Housing Agency. In transport, the Rail Procurement Agency and the National Roads Authority have been merged into a single body. Locally, county enterprise boards have been integrated into local authorities. In industrial relations, the Workplace Relations Commission now does the work of the Labour Relations Commission, the National Employment Rights Authority, the Equality Tribunal and the Employment Appeals Tribunal. We are seeing examples of work coming together into single bodies. I must say that when this merging was taking place, it was opposed. The reason it was opposed was because people felt that areas of impartiality might be compromised and areas of expertise might not be discharged if it all came under one agency. Much of this rationalisation is already occurring. A further review of rationalisation will take place in the future. That work is too important and too sensitive. It affects some policy areas and people who work for the State. That work is most appropriately and most effectively done through Departments and particularly through my own Department, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

I will conclude on how we might be able to carry out this work better in the future, beyond the adoption of this Bill. There are two areas and I have talked to Senator Ó Céidigh about this. On budget day, I announced that the Government will be carrying out a comprehensive spending review for the first time in many years. We will not be doing it on budget day or as part of an external aid programme. We will be doing it because many of the issues that have been raised by the Senator need to be re-examined in a careful way and at a time when we are not in a phase of acute crisis. These kinds of overviews have been a part of how we have governed ourselves in the past. They are a part of how other countries govern themselves now. It should be a regular part of the work we do. I hope that many of the issues the Senator has raised could be dealt with through this process of a comprehensive spending review, which we are hoping to conclude next summer.

With regard to the work of broader commercial bodies, I published a new code on the governance of State bodies over the summer. I launched it in August in the Institute of Public Administration. I want to have the code in place by next summer. We are putting in place a 12-month period to allow that work to be done. I expect that we would be best placed to deal with many of the issues the Senator has raised about oversight and governance within semi-State bodies through the full implementation of that code of practice. While I agree with many of the objectives the Senator has outlined, I am not in a position to support this Bill but I do believe that through the proper implementation of a comprehensive spending review and the conclusion of the roll-out of a uniform code of governance amongst our semi-State sector next summer, we might find different and more effective ways to deliver the objectives to which the Senator has referred. I thank him for all of the work that has gone into the development of this Bill. These are important issues that I believe we will be able to deliver in a different way.

I will conclude on the tone of the debate. It is great to hear Senators acknowledge in the House the good work that is already happening. I would like us to get to a point at which the phrase "quango" is no longer pejorative. Good work does happen in State agencies. If we get to a place in which the tone for such debates is automatically a pejorative one, we do not serve well the important work that goes on.More to the point, we do not serve the important job of trying to review and rationalise the work of those agencies where necessary. The Senator has not done that, which is why I commend the approach taken. If we move into the space of not acknowledging good work that has already taken place, we will weaken our ability to take difficult decisions in the future when such decisions are required.

I thank the Senator Ó Céidigh for the work he has done and all the Senators for their contributions to the debate. As I explained, I am unable to stay for the remainder of the debate. I hope I have outlined the reasons we cannot accept the Bill and the alternative ways in which this work can be continued.