Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister is serious about this proposal, there must be investigability. He must provide for the power to detain the person who leaks that information and put him or her through the ordinary process of questioning for a serious offence under the Criminal Justice Act 1984. In the absence of such a power, this confidentiality obligation is more or less worthless. The Minister suggested that I should compare this provision with the punishment of the disclosure of confidential information under the property registration system. Perhaps there are terrible secrets in the Four Courts relating to who owns a certain property, who enjoys a right of way over a property or who applied for a right of way over a property. Maybe there is confidential information in what used to be the registry of deeds and processes in the land registry and is now part of the Property Registration Authority. Maybe there is some terrible secret down there, but I cannot imagine it, whereas I do not need an imagination to see that an evaluation of the suitability of a professional person or a sitting judge must of its very essence remain confidential, especially when it is carried out by a person who is not even a member of the commission. I remind the House that such a person will be appointed under contract with or without the consent of the Minister because the Minister will not choose these people. He will have no say in who the person is because the commission is independent.

The Minister has shied away from the point that has been picked up on by Senators Norris and Craughwell, which is that we are talking about the power to carry out a proper investigation. I suggest that providing for a summary offence, rather than the power to carry out a proper investigation, is parking ticket stuff in terms of the consequences for those involved. If they are in any way intelligent - most of the people involved in this whole process will be intelligent - they will realise that they are free to tell the Garda to get lost because they have nothing to say and do not propose to be interviewed on foot of the Garda's suspicions on the matter. This will mean that the door is slammed in the face of any proper investigation. I ask the Minister to reconsider the circumstances I have detailed and the point I have made. The confidential information provision needs to be taken seriously. When I said on Second Stage that I was worried about this aspect of the legislation, the Minister kindly told the House he would do something on this front. However, the proposal he has introduced is simply not adequate. There is no point in coming up with a non-solution to the question of investigability dressed up as a half-solution to it. Breaches of this kind are investigable or they are not. My experience, based on the incident I mentioned earlier, is that the impact of this provision will be limited in the absence of a power of arrest. That was the view of the then Garda Commissioner. He found that doors were slammed in his face. He had to accept that people did not want to be investigated and did not want the investigation to go further. That is the evil we are dealing with here. I strongly urge the Minister to face up to that fact. He should accept that his amendment is not acceptable in its present form. It is not up to the job. It does not add very much to the Bill because it can be ignored with impunity. That is the problem.