Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 9, after line 40, to insert the following: “Report on Reforms to the Marine Casualty Investigation Board

16. The Minister shall, within 2 years of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications, a report detailing the implementation of reforms to the Marine Casualty Investigation Board.”.

I will speak on the amendment now and I will speak on the section later.

First, I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Naughton, to the House. I realise she has a job to do, and we have our own job to do here. This is a very important legislative measure. It was passed by the Dáil and it was very interesting to read the transcripts of the debate on it.

Amendment No. 1 was ruled out of order, but its general scope fits in so I will loosely embrace it in amendment No. 2. I wish to flag to the House that it is my intention to table a slightly modified version of amendment No. 1 on Report Stage. I have said enough about that. The Cathaoirleach wrote to inform me that it was ruled out of order and I accept that ruling.

The Merchant Shipping (Investigation of Marine Casualties) (Amendment) Bill 2021 was debated extensively at the committee, as the Minister of State will be aware. I read the transcripts of the contributions she and the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, made on it. There was huge engagement. As an island country, we have to be very conscious of the importance of the Marine Casualty Investigation Board and I took the opportunity to look at its website and to dip into a number of its reports. There is a large and significant body of work to be done there, but we must have confidence in a marine casualty investigation unit, board, authority or whatever one calls it. Deputy Cathal Crowe, from Clare, spoke extensively about it, as did a number of other Deputies. Deputy O'Rourke tabled extensive and comprehensive amendments. Some of them were ruled out of order, not because of a constraint on the Exchequer but because they were deemed to be outside the remit of the Bill.

I wish to touch on the issues with regard to having confidence in the Marine Casualty Investigation Board. My amendment refers to two years. That is a hell of a long time and I will be extremely disappointed if the Minister of State tells me today that she cannot facilitate an amendment that applies out to two years. That could possibly be the end of the term of this Government, but it is short of that. The amendment states: "The Minister shall, within 2 years of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications, a report detailing the implementation of reforms to the Marine Casualty Investigation Board.” Why do I propose that? I do so because there are a number of issues in respect of reports. The Minister of State will be familiar with both the Clinch report and the Lacey report. I understand that both reports remain unpublished. Some parts of the Lacey report were made available to the committee, but I am not a member of that committee so I cannot say that for sure.

The Lacey report was undertaken by Ms Róisín Lacey SC. It was delivered on 25 August 2010 to the Department of Transport, but has not been published to date. The report was commissioned by the then Minister for Transport, Mr. Noel Dempsey. The report recommended establishing a national accident investigation office that is independent in every way from the Department of Transport, encompassing aviation, rail and marine, and identifying that it had to be done to comply with the EU directive that was being transposed into Irish law. The Minister of State will be very familiar with this as I have seen her engagement on this legislation.

That is the Lacey report, so I will now refer to the Clinch report. That report was conducted by Captain Steve Clinch of the UK-based Clinchmaritime Limited. The report was commissioned by the Department of Transport to carry out an independent review of the organisational structures of the Marine Casualty Investigation Board, MCIB. The key objective of the review was to assess the current organisational structures for marine casualty investigation and to set out in a report any recommendations to achieve the most appropriate and effective marine casualty investigation structures for Ireland, taking into account national, EU and international law and obligations. The Clinch report was delivered to the Department in 2021. Again, there have been no issues relating to that, or at least it has not been published. The Minister of State will also be very familiar with the court case of Mr. Michael Kingston, an action he took against the Department and the State. It is important to state again that the Clinch report was a Government-funded report. It was independent and it reviewed the maritime casualties in Ireland.

There are very serious issues here. The Minister of State knows the complexities of this issue. It is important to have some type of accountability and to have confidence in how we are managing this area.That is one of the key reasons I am asking for a report to be considered by the committee. That is not unreasonable in any way. I will not go on at great length because I realise the Minister of State is comprehensively briefed on these matters. Suffice it to say that when I looked at all the documents on this, it became clear that there was support for change right across the House. However, the Minister somehow believed it was not possible to bring about the sort of change envisaged in the amendments.

I have a particularly interesting quote that I want to put on the record of the House. At a meeting of the Select Committee on Transport and Communications on Wednesday, 16 February 2022, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, stated:

As the Clinch report was commissioned on the back of the Department's initiative, it is very much in our interest that it would be published and acted on. I am happy to commit here to doing exactly that. Central to that, as Deputies Carey, O'Rourke and Cathal Crowe and others have said, is that we look at a new structure and a new system, including the full-time independent investigation unit [which is what I am seeking and what the two amendments I tabled today sought]. What I said in private session is that we expect the publication of the Clinch report at the end of quarter 1 [2022] and that is still the timeline, subject to the Office of the Attorney General and others signing off on it.

I do not know where the Attorney General stands on this. Is he still working on it? Perhaps he is. If so, it is fair enough, but we cannot have Ministers making commitments and then not delivering on them. There may be genuine reasons; I simply do not know. The Minister of State may be able to shed some light on it. This is an important matter.

I referred to Mr. Michael Kingston earlier. I do not want to get into too much detail other than to say that he is the maritime lawyer who took a case against the State. Let me refer to the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, delivered on 9 July 2021. It states Ireland has failed to provide for a maritime accident investigation body that was "independent in its organisation and decision-making of any party whose interests could conflict with the task". This is very serious because the courts of the EU are saying it. Basically, the court found one cannot be judge and jury in one's own cause. The court noted that the board consisted of five members, including the Secretary General of the then Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, or his or her deputy, and the chief surveyor of the marine survey office. The court judgment also stated we need to learn from the tragedies and save lives, and that there is a clear conflict in officials investigating their own regulatory framework and supposedly making recommendations to themselves by themselves and for themselves. The MCIB was established in 2002 and has issued over 300 reports.

I have examined the contributions of the Members and was most struck by those of Sinn Féin Deputies O'Rourke and Mac Lochlainn, who centred many of their arguments on the same issues on which I have centred mine today. Labour Party Deputy Duncan Smith and Green Party Deputy Patrick Costello had similar views and expressed similar concerns, as did Social Democrats Deputy Catherine Murphy, who spoke about the lax attitude towards implementing EU directives and the lack of maritime expertise on the board. These are very serious suggestions and concerns. The Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, acknowledged that there was a need for new mechanisms for appointing members of the board of the MCIB. I agree with her. I do not know how she has got on in this matter.

In essence, my concern is about safety. I have no axe to grind with anyone. I do not know anyone involved in here and do not know anyone who has ever taken a case here. I so happen to live in Dún Laoghaire, at a harbour, and so happen to have been a director, for ten years, of a State company that was looking after that harbour. I am very much aware of the issues and concerns that arise. There is a coast in the Minister of State's constituency, so she will know the significance of this. I do not doubt her support for some sort of reform of the MCIB.

I ask the Minister of State to ask her officials, sooner rather than later, to ensure we have the Lacey and the Clinch reports published and put into the public domain. They were paid for by the State. Why are they being buried and hidden? We need to publish them. I accept the Attorney General has a role and may need time to consider the reports in more detail. I can confirm today that I wrote formally to the Minister of State's Department yesterday and several other sources, under freedom of information provisions, requesting that the two reports be made public. I have to await the outcome. Much of the content might be redacted. I understand the issues and mechanisms associated with freedom of information.

What am I asking? I am confirming that I will submit a new version of amendment No. 1 for the next Stage of the Bill. My first amendment tabled for today used the phrase "The Minister shall". The second sought to ensure that the Minister shall, within two years of the passing of this Bill, prepare and lay before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications, of which I am not a member but with whose members I have had much engagement, a report detailing the implementation of reforms to the MCIB. I ask for the Minister of State's support. This is a very reasonable, considered, balanced request. I hope we will have the Minister of State's support.