Last week I was dealing with the amendment put down by the Minister. It states in the amendment "shall be guilty of an offence" but in that section of the amendment the Minister does not state the amount of the fine. Maybe the amounts are as they apply under the other sections of the Bill and I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that in his reply. We had reservations about the earlier drafting of the section and welcome this amendment. I had some reservations about evidence not taken on oath. Such evidence would be hazy; witnesses called might not attend and, if they did attend, their evidence could be open to different interpretations. I presume that the tribunal, under this section, would, if necessary receive legal aid and that the Department of the Environment would pay these costs. An inquiry recently ended has cost, in legal fees, over £1 million, which is an enormous amount of money.
If an investigation were carried out on any small premises where a disaster might, unhappily, occur, what recourse would the owner have to legal aid? A man who owned or managed a small hotel or business, or who leased property, could not afford to hire legal people to carry out an investigation which might last for weeks and cost a lot of money. This goes for any place where people might congregate. There is no mention in the Bill of legal aid in such a case. There should be an arrangement to indemnify these people in some way. We did not put down an amendment, preferring to have the matter brought up in the House to see if it was possible to come to arrangements with the insurance companies.
In regard to the Bundoran inquiry, would the Minister let us know if there is a change of heart in that direction and if an immediate investigation will be carried out into this disaster? We, on this side of the House, have been pressing for an immediate hearing on this and people are anxious to know the outcome of any hearing. The leak in the reports has not helped and this matter should be cleared up immediately.
The Government amendment states that the hearing may be partly or wholly in public at the discretion of the council. All the investigations which the council may carry out should be in public. Anything in the line of a major investigation which is held in private could be open to accusations that there was a cover up. That would be a dangerous situation and not in everyone's best interests. The IIRS, or somebody qualified, should examine the seating arrangements of a number of hotels and places of entertainment where people congregate, to ensure that they are not of an inflammable nature. It might be better if the amounts of the fines payable for offences were included in the amendment. However, this may come under another part of the Bill.
The insurance companies could be called upon to play a more positive role regarding legal expenses incurred by all the parties. This matter should be looked into.