Seanad debates

Thursday, 16 December 2021

Appropriation Bill 2021: Second Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Michael McDowellMichael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In the limited time available to me, which shows that this is normally seen as more or less a rubber-stamp debate, I will say a couple of things. I am reading some biographies of 18th century English politicians and the whole idea of appropriation was considerably important as the only means their parliament had over their executive, in the form of the king and his ministers. Controlling supply was the huge mechanism of control. Of course, in a constitutional democracy, Dáil Éireann can vote no confidence in a Taoiseach and that is the end of that Administration and the Executive is held in account by that much more democratic means.

I remember, as Minister for justice, that towards the end of any given year, there would be a bit of a rush to get rid of unpaid capital available to the Department on various items rather than hand it back to the Minister for Finance on the basis that the next time round, it would be said the Department had to hand back money last time and it would be asked why it needed so much this time. I am aware of those kinds of conventions and realities.

Holding the Executive to account in a Parliament is very important.We do it through parliamentary questions, if one is a Deputy, and sometimes through Commencement debates in this House in some respects. Fundamentally, however, there is a growing concern in society, which we would be very foolish to ignore, that the Executive is not adequately held to account by the Houses of the Oireachtas in the way that executives in other parliamentary democracies are. In my view, this is no more clearly underlined than in the current Covid crisis. We have the Health Acts and various other statutes that we passed on an emergency basis that give to the Government vast powers to close down sectors of the economy and make decisions of this and that kind about social, economic and ordinary behaviour. No Government in this country has held such powers since that days of the Second World War.

There is an absolutely unanswerable case, and I have said this on a couple of occasions in the House recently, for the establishment of greater Oireachtas scrutiny of the Covid crisis. We are giving huge powers to Ministers to make statutory instruments that are having radical effects on us. Who knows what will happen when the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, next knocks heads with the Government and decides on what else it considers necessary? There is no answer to the legitimate demand that Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann should establish a joint committee, like that chaired by Deputy McNamara in the interregnum before the establishment of the coalition Government, to hold Ministers and senior civil servants and administrators in State agencies fully accountable on a weekly basis and have them explain precisely what is happening. It is not sufficient that we in these Houses learn on television what an RTÉ reporter put to a Minister at a press conference on Lower Baggot Street or what Dr. Tony Holohan or whomever else it may be said by way of response. We cannot have Government by the media; we must have Government by accountability. People who exercise these powers and take huge decisions concerning our collective futures should be accountable on a daily basis. If this is an emergency - and NPHET says that there is an emergency - we, as an Oireachtas, should have emergency scrutiny of the Government and its actions.

It was stated previously that the ordinary sectoral committees would provide an adequate degree of scrutiny over the activities of the HSE, the Government and such. That has proven not to be so. The Joint Committee on Health does not actually hold the Government or the HSE to account. The media do a better job than the sectoral committees.

I ask again - perhaps some time I will take the guerrilla action on this in terms of the business of these Houses - that the Government hears the demand that is being made of it to put together a proper accountability mechanism in Leinster House to supervise the powers it has arrogated to itself to deal with this emergency.

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