I move:
That the Orders of Reference of the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism, constituted pursuant to the Order of Dáil Éireann of 6 July, 1983 be amended as follows:—
By the insertion of a new paragraph as follows:
‘(5) Subject to the consent of the Minister for the Public Service the Select Committee shall have the power to engage the services of persons with specialist or technical knowledge to assist it.'."
The purpose of this amendment is to extend the powers of the committee to enable them to engage the services of persons with specialist or technical knowledge to assist them. The committee welcome the agreement of the Minister and of the House to the extension of these powers. We on the committee have been very busy and we feel that there are a number of areas with which we could deal more adequately if we had certain consultancies available to us. One of these, for instance, would relate to the area of parental responsibility which is under discussion at the moment. We are anxious to have this aspect gone into in some depth.
There is the question also of people going to prison because of debts and also the problems arising from delays experienced in court and other areas, too, which the committee would like to consider.
