I welcome the Bill. The Joint Committee on Commercial State-sponsored Bodies has been requesting the introduction of this legislation for many years. In 1976 — the year the committee was established — the Oireachtas Privilege and Procedure Bill was introduced. In its original form it dealt with compellability and privilege for witnesses but those provisions were removed during its passage through the Houses and we were left with a simple, short Bill which merely extended to committee members the privileges enjoyed by Members of the Dáil. Since then we have been requesting that committees of the House such as the Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies, which was set up to do a particular job, shold be given the means to do it by legislation. Members have referred to the delay in bringing this Bill before the House. As you may recall a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, in 1981 you and I were members of the Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies. The chairman at that time was the former Deputy Roche and he outlined on behalf of the committee the reasons for the introduction of this type of Bill that would give power to committees. On that occasion he indicated that the Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies had no legal redress where a person refused to attend, in other words anyone requested to attend could thumb his nose at the committee.
Also deleted on Committee Stage of the Committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Privilege and Procedure) Bill, 1976, were the subsections designed to compel witnesses to come in and the provision of penalties for those who did not. The demand to increase the relevance of the committees has been ongoing since then. I was an ordinary member and a vice-chairman before I became chairman and during that period we had many examples of witnesses refusing to attend or submit documents to the committee. In 1984 the Department of Communications refused to submit its particulars about Irish Shipping's five year corporate plan. Also in 1984 the then chairman of Irish Shipping refused to attend a meeting of the joint committee and in December 1984 the Departments of Finance and Communications informed the joint committee that it would not be appropriate for their officials to attend the meeting and give evidence during an inquiry into Irish Shipping. In June 1985 officials of the Department of Energy did not attend a meeting of the joint committee during its examination of Bord Gáis Éireann. In March 1989 the Irish National Petroleum Corporation refused to meet the committee with the usual sub judice ploy because of a very minor matter in this semi-State body. This is one of the semi-State bodies that should be investigated regularly by the Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies.
In April 1989 members of the then board of Siúcre Éireann were invited individually to attend before the committee and they refused or were told not to attend. In February 1991 An Post refused to discuss its viability plan and any matters connected with it. This is not an exhaustive list and in all these instances the Joint Committee on Commercial State Sponsored Bodies was unable to take further action apart from voicing its disappointment at the negative response and how its credibility was being undermined by these refusals. In fact the whole committee system had become a joke in the eyes of the general public and the media rarely covered its discussions at that time. As a result the then committee decided to report to the Dáil on its Terms of Reference and resources as follows:
In the context of recent developments, revelations in certain semi-State bodies it is clear that the Joint Committee as currently resourced and empowered is severely hampered from carrying out the incisive and persuasive examinations that are required. While the Joint Committee believes that the mere fact of considerable resources will not of itself guarantee 100 per cent effectiveness nevertheless it can be argued convincingly that it is unreasonable and disingenuous to require the Joint Committee to act as an alert watch dog with only extremely limited resources. Consequently the Joint Committee recommends:
(1) that it be given power to compel witnesses to attend or produce documents and that penalties apply to non-compliance in accordance with the procedures to be determined by law;
(2) the question of the privilege of witnesses to be resolved by extending qualified privilege to witnesses before public meetings of the Joint Committee;
(3) a formal mechanism to be provided to facilitate debates on its report;
(4) adequate resources and
(5) the review of the sub judice practice be expedited as a matter of urgency.
In the absence of appropriate powers, realistic resources and follow-up debate on the action of the report the existence and operation of the Joint Committee will be seen or perceived to be only a token exercise in public accountability rather than the genuine monitoring body it was intended to be.
The then chairman of the committee, the former Deputy Roche, on behalf of all members of the committee presented this report to the House on 26 November 1991 and the matter was debated in the House in 1992. The then Minister for Finance, Deputy Bertie Ahern, promised action on the various areas mentioned but I am sorry to say that although assurances were given no action was taken. After the General Election of 1992 the matter was taken up on many occasions. I am amazed the Opposition has accused the Government of foot dragging but I can show the House four letters which I wrote to the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Bertie Ahern, between 1992 and 16 March 1994 to which I received the usual reply:
I wish to acknowledge your further letter regarding compellability of witnesses to appear before the Oireachtas committees. The matter is receiving attention and I will be in contact with you again as soon as possible.
That happened on four occasions in those two years and nothing happened. I compliment the Minister on bringing forward this Bill and on implementing other measures.
On 1 March of this year the order of reference of the Joint Committee was changed and widened. The main recommendation is that appointees to high office in the State shall attend meetings of the joint committees as appropriate and subject to legal constraints in their office to discuss issues which are relevant to the matters comprehended by paragraph 1, which is to report on the accounts and operations of the commercial semi-state bodies.
Order 11 states that Ministers and Ministers of State shall appear before the joint committee to discuss current policies relevant to the matters comprehended in paragraph (1) and the implementation of such policies in their Department. A Minister or Minister of State may request the joint committee to convene to enable him or her to explain current policy proposals or to initiate debate thereon.
This expanded our operation as regards Departments. Two Ministers have come before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies since those additional terms of reference were given. The first Minister requested to attend the committee since it was set up in 1976 was the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Higgins, who dealt with the White Paper on broadcasting. The second was the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Deputy Lowry, who discussed the difficulties in CIE. That meeting was well publicised but our terms of reference remained the same. While the Minister's accusations of surveillance etc. were well known to committee members, it was not possible to investigate them further and they had to be ruled out of order. However, the Minister was questioned. The meeting was lively and well attended.
This Bill is welcome because people who, under the present terms of reference may refuse to attend at or produce records before the committee will not be in a position to do so under this legislation. The committee of which I am chairman initiated the pressure to have introduced this type of legislation. The provisions of the various sections are set out in the explanatory memorandum as follows. Section 2 "provides that only those committees on which power to send for persons, papers and records is conferred by the Oireachtas shall be covered by the principal provisions of the Bill". That is in line with the terms of reference of our committee. Section 4 "provides that a committee may not direct a person to give evidence or produce or send a document which is not relevant to the committee's terms of reference". This is the way in which we have been interpreting those terms of reference over many years. This Bill seems to contain the exact copies of those terms for which we have been asking for a long time.
The many sections of this Bill will require close scrutiny by all Members, especially those who will deal with it on Committee Stage. Any Member interested in this will have an opportunity to suggest improvements and seek explanations as to how it will work. It will have a great influence on the type of work committees can do and will be an improvement on what the position has been.
The financing and staffing of committees, indeed the level of legal advice they will require, will need to be vastly increased. My committee has lost an analyst and a clerk who has been replaced by a clerk with responsibility in respect of all the other committees. I consider that to have been a retrograde step. Without adequate staffing and other resources we will not be in a position to carry on our present level of work, take on the responsibility that this Bill will impose on all committees and still hope to get good results.
Section 6 (7) "provides that the reasonable costs and expenses in relation to an appeal shall be paid to the person concerned by the Minister for Finance". If people do not live locally and have to travel to come before us or if they need legal representation, their expenses will have to be paid for out of the Votes of the Houses the Oireachtas. This will impose a heavy additional expense. On the other hand, if legal representatives come with witnesses—it will be necessary for them to have legal-advice since committees are held in public—we will need a proper legal section within the Houses so as to be able to give proper advice in respect of any investigation. With these extra powers the committees will be transformed. They will be in a position to carry out much more rigorous investigations, the type of role that was envisaged for them in the first place.
Many commercial semi-State bodies were integral parts of previous Departments. For example, An Post and Bord Telecom came out of the old Department of Posts and Telegraphs — other Departments had such responsibility, too. Until they were re-established as semi-State bodies, they could be questioned as part of a Minister's responsibility under the various mechanisms available in the House — Question Time, private notice questions, matters on the Adjournment or during debate on departmental Estimates. When the relevant committees were set up, questions from Deputies about the performance of these bodies were referred to their boards and that was the end of it. This was the reason for setting up a committee like the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored bodies, which is responsible for a sector where considerable amounts of public funds are spent and money collected through a form of taxation supported by grants from Government — taxation, legal fees, licence fees etc. Therefore, it is proper that public representatives have a forum in which they can question the operation of these bodies, their spending and their reports.
Without the powers being provided for in this Bill, that work could not be done adequately. There has been a great reluctance on many occasions by some chief executives and chairmen of boards to give evidence before Committees.
I welcome this Bill. I have drawn attention to what will be involved when its provisions are implemented. I look forward to the Committee Stage debate on this, one of the most important Bills ever to come before us, dealing, as it is, with the semi-State sector which involves the expenditure of some billions of pounds. Other committees will have similar problems to those of the committee with which I am associated. I congratulate the Minister on bringing the Bill forward.