Enda Kenny
Question:1 Mr. Kenny asked the Taoiseach the number of staff currently employed in the Attorney General's office; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26171/03]
Ceisteanna – Questions. - Departmental Staff.
Enda Kenny
Question:2 Mr. Kenny asked the Taoiseach the procedures in place in the Attorney General's office for establishing panels of external lawyers for assisting in the preparation of secondary legislation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26175/03]
Pat Rabbitte
Question:3 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Taoiseach the current staffing levels in the Office of the Attorney General; if all grades are at their authorised numbers; if he has satisfied himself that there is sufficient staff to allow the prompt drafting of all primary and secondary legislation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27263/03]
Trevor Sargent
Question:4 Mr. Sargent asked the Taoiseach the current staff levels in the Attorney General's office; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28832/03]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 4, inclusive, together.
The Office of the Attorney General is operating well and efficiently and has sufficient staff numbers to manage the day-to-day routine drafting of all primary and secondary legislation. The full complement of staff in the office is 123. Seven full-time vacancies and one job-sharing vacancy have arisen and are in the course of being filled through the usual competitions. There are no unnecessary or insurmountable delays. Only four of these vacancies arise on the drafting side of the office.
Earlier this year a significant number of EU measures were overdue for transposition. I was anxious that Departments would clear this backlog as soon as possible and before our Presidency on 1 January 2004. When it became apparent that a number of Departments intended to give instructions to draft statutory instruments urgently in the past two to three months of this year, it was clear that this would place an inordinate amount of pressure on the parliamentary counsel. At my request, the Attorney General then wrote to Departments suggesting that under the circumstances, outside barristers might be employed on an exceptional basis to ensure that the highest number of EU directives could be transposed by the January deadline. The letter was accompanied by a list of barristers known to have experience in EU law, but no panel was drawn up. Some Departments availed of this suggestion while others continued to use the services of the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel or internal drafting services.
A significant backlog of directives has been transposed and we aim to have our transposition deficit for Internal Market measures below the EU target of 1.5% by January 2004. In addition, the drafting of the priority list of primary legislation promised for publication before the resumption of the Dáil in January has proceeded unaffected.
There seems to be an increase in the number of staff employed since the last time I raised this matter. Will the Taoiseach confirm that a new procedure for selecting lawyers for drafting work was posted on the website of the Office of the Attorney General after a freedom of information request application had been made by Deputy Jim O'Keeffe? Is a different system now in operation for recruiting lawyers for drafting work from that which applied previously?
If the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel is adequately staffed and resourced, why has such a backlog of directives arisen? Is the outsourcing of this work a new departure? Does it mean that further drafting work on primary or secondary legislation will be outsourced? How many items of EU secondary legislation remain to be implemented? What pressure has the Taoiseach put on Departments to see that this is done before he takes up office as President of the European Council on 1 January?
Deputy Kenny will recall that at the beginning of this year I stated that I wanted to bring the transposition of EU directives up to date as far as possible. The office has received instructions about many directives which have been transposed before December. Drafting is in progress for a number of these apart from legal issues in some cases. A total of 79 EU measures have been received within the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. Of these 56 statutory instruments have been made, work is in progress in seven cases, seven more have been stamped and are at the draft stage within Departments, three are the subject of legal query and six have been abandoned. The parliamentary counsel had engaged Department policy issues where it was not necessary because other measures had superseded them or they had been enacted in more current directives or statutory instruments.
As regards the posting of the advisory counsel of the Attorney General's office, many Departments transpose their own directives where they have the ability to do so. Some Departments have their own legal advisers and others employ qualified solicitors or barristers who can do this work within the Department. Some Departments do not have this facility. To try to get the work up to date, the Attorney General's office produced a list of people in private practice outside the Government system who were experts in European law and could be called on. Some Departments availed of this while others did not.
Deputy Jim O'Keeffe raised a question about the legal profession. The answer is the same as always. The legal profession organises itself into two separate and distinct branches with a well-established division of work. The Bar allows familiarity not just with the formal rules under which the courts operate but also the informal practices and understanding that are part of the legal system. Barristers bring to the Attorney General's office a particular understanding of litigation from practising at the Bar and know how judges are likely to treat certain issues. They have inside knowledge of the skills, strengths and weaknesses of practitioners at the Bar. I cannot stress sufficiently that the Bar continues to provide highly qualified candidates with experience of the conduct of litigation as well as the courts and the judges. This is the sort of advice the Attorney General requires from the advisory counsel who work with him.
Deputy Jim O'Keeffe and others asked why solicitors are not allowed to apply for advisory counsel posts when they can apply for parliamentary counsel and assistant parliamentary counsel positions. The point has been made repeatedly over the years by myself and others that there are two different professions. Parliamentary counsel and assistant parliamentary counsel are draftspersons. As regards allowing solicitors to apply for advisory counsel posts, barristers and solicitors have different skills which each profession practises. That is the reason. The rule has been changed over the years to allow solicitors to apply for some of the posts that previously they could not, but the position has not altered for parliamentary counsel and assistant parliamentary counsel.
Will the Taoiseach say how well he considers the Office of the Attorney General to be equipped with parliamentary draftspersons? The figures I have are different from the Taoiseach's. As I understand it from the schedule as published by the Government, 22 Bills were promised to be published this term. According to my count only three have been produced. Is that due to drafting difficulties in the Attorney General's office or are they political difficulties? Is it easier now to recruit parliamentary draftspersons than formerly? Is the Taoiseach saying some Departments are being encouraged to do their own drafting up to a certain stage? Will he say whether this office contributes to the logjam that appears to have arisen in publishing Bills?
It is never easy to hire well-qualified draftspersons. It is a skill which, like many others, comes with time. It is easier to hire staff for the changes and reforms that have been made in the Attorney General's office, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. To hire people with good skills takes time. We have occasionally used people from outside the State over the years. Recruitment is ongoing and many are in training, but it takes time.
Regarding the Bills to be published, the session tends to run in accordance with the Bills as circulated, and this includes the Christmas period. The same is true of the summer period. The position is that four Bills have been published this session. Many amendments were made to Bills which necessitated an extensive advisory drafting input from the Office of the Attorney General. I am reasonably confident that the vast majority of Bills promised for publication this session will be available within the timescale. It is also the case that many Bills only become available towards the end of the parliamentary session.
The current position of the Bills on the A list of promised legislation is as follows: four have been published; one Bill is not being proceeded with by the Department concerned this session; eight Bills have been stamped draft issued; four Bills are being drafted; three Bills are with Departments; and the memorandum for one Bill will be submitted to Government next week. This does not include the Appropriation Bill. Other Bills have been cleared for drafting. Four Bills were published after the previous session and before the commencement of the current one.
There is always a delay in legislation for one reason or another. It is not always the fault of the parliamentary counsel's office. It is not perfect and neither can it be until sufficient competency levels are achieved. The Finance Bill alone takes up the entire time of one person between budget day and the time the Bill is enacted. The Social Welfare Bill takes a substantial amount of time, as has the second regulation Bill of the Central Bank. The Disability Bill 2003 has required a huge amount of drafting and redrafting since September. I have already referred to the directives.
The Attorney General's office is working at something equivalent to the high teens during every session, which is a high number of Bills. I was asked some months ago how this compares to alternative parliaments with far greater resources. Our output is high by comparison.
I hear what the Taoiseach says, but the Finance and Social Welfare Bills are annual occurrences. The pattern is well established. The Department of Finance does most of the preparatory work for the Finance Bill. I do not understand how that might hold up the Government's schedule. The Government said it would publish 22 Bills. Presumably that erred on the side of caution. According to the Taoiseach, only four of the 22 have been produced. That is a poor performance.
The Taoiseach said that, while a number of parliamentary draftspersons have been recruited, it will take time because it is a highly skilled task. I understand that, but is there still a problem in the office? What did he mean by his reference to Departments? How many Departments have the capacity to produce the scheme of a Bill up to a certain measure of quality? My understanding was that the Office of the Attorney General wanted to keep that function broadly within the office for reasons of uniformity and others. Has that changed and which Departments, for example, come forward with their own Bills?
I did not say that the Social Welfare and Finance Bills were affecting this session. I outlined the position over a year. Even though the Department of the Social and Family Affairs and the Department of Finance do a large amount of work, the parliamentary draftspersons spend several weeks on the Finance Bill every year. The Social Welfare Bill is more straightforward because it means changing the amounts in many cases, not the categories. A large amount of work is involved, in the Finance Bill in particular.
In at least five or six of the large Departments staff are sufficiently competent to do much of the work. The Attorney General's office would say there is still a large amount of work in trying to achieve uniformity, checking, cross-referencing and so on. While the work carried out in the Departments of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Finance, Social and Family Affairs and Justice, Equality and Law Reform is helpful, the office must still do cross-referencing. Approximately six Departments are involved in that work, which is helpful.
There is just one vacancy at grade one on the advisory side. All other positions are filled. In the parliamentary section there is one vacancy for a parliamentary counsel and there are vacancies for two parliamentary counsels at grade two. There is also a vacancy for the post of consultant drafter because this person has either left or is about to leave. This will mean a vacancy because we have had a consultant drafter for some time. There is also a legal researcher. This is a very small number compared to the number of vacancies in the Attorney General's office for the past four or five years. It takes time for people to become competent and upgrade their skills. Approximately 15 Bills will have been published in this session. The norm appears to be 15 to 18 Bills, which is a fairly large number. It is probably more than enough in terms of what this House can deal with.
On the Attorney General's office, I note from the Estimates that the general heads indicate a reduction in funding. The figure given is €13,155,000 but overall there are reductions of up to 56% in funding. The main increase relates to salaries. Is this related directly to benchmarking or will more people be hired? It appears more people will be needed as there will have to be a decision on the EU constitution. Has a set number of barristers been allocated to work on the EU constitution and on bringing Ireland up to date with the backlog in transposing EU directives to which the Taoiseach referred? As recently as last April our backlog was growing faster than every other member state bar Italy, and in July of this year there were almost 50 outstanding EU directives. When the Taoiseach claims we will catch up and will be behind to an acceptable level, whatever that means, will extra people be hired to bring this about or will the work be done by the people already employed in the Attorney General's office?
I said that there are 123 people employed in the overall office. I have referred to the number of outstanding vacancies, which is small. A competition was held recently in respect of the positions to which I referred. The office is currently in contact with the highest placed candidates with a view to agreeing a starting date. It appears that these people will be employed from 1 January or early in the new year. The remaining posts are filled and there should be little or no vacancies by early in the new year.
I have given the figures on EU directives. We were in a bad position in this regard at the beginning of the year, but a big effort was made this year by the Attorney General's office, the parliamentary counsel, Departments and a list of outside legal people who were made available to deal with the work. Some of these people were taken up by some of the Departments, which dramatically improved the position.
I have answered Deputy Rabbitte on the legislation.
What is the position on the EU constitution?
The Attorney General's office has people permanently employed. At least one person was employed during the checking of the work. A legal sub-committee, including an official of the Attorney General's office, worked for the past six months on updating all the existing treaties for inclusion in the new constitution, to ensure the legal work was brought up to date and done in a way that was user-friendly. In Ireland's case the work dated back 30 years through all EU law. Additional people were involved in this work and the Attorney General attended some of the meetings in Brussels. That legal work was completed recently and there is no intention of re-opening it in the final discussions. That work has resulted in consolidation of what has happened in the past 30 years. The main volume of work is now completed and will form part of the EU constitution.
What is the current practice regarding the drafting of legislation in the Irish language? We were promised significant improvements moving towards the simultaneous publication of legislation in both the Irish and English texts.
The question does not arise under Questions Nos. 1 to 4.
It will be apparent to the Ceann Comhairle that it does.
Sorry, Deputy, it does not. The Chair rules that it does not arise.
Perhaps I should submit my questions to you in advance, a Cheann Comhairle, so that you can scrutinise them and make the determination for me.
If the Deputy submits his questions to the office they will appear on the Order Paper and he will be entitled to an answer the same as everyone else. It is not appropriate to go outside the questions that have been submitted.
My question is in the context of the Attorney General's office, which is responsible for the drafting of legislation. This is a significant and important aspect of the drafting of legislation in the first language of our country. Will the Taoiseach indicate whether the backlog in the translation of English language texts has been addressed? Have all the aspects necessary to move towards simultaneous publication of Irish and English texted legislation been considered in terms of the recruitment of staff to the Attorney General's office?
I do not have the information for the Deputy but I will try to get it. Following the court case, it was agreed that the Attorney General's office would deal with the issue. It has been working on the backlog but I cannot give the Deputy a definitive answer. For current work it certainly is in position.
There have been difficulties in recruiting additional staff with the ability to draft legislation. The existing staff are excellent but this involves extra work. The matter was taken into account in the recent recruitment. I assume the posts being offered will help in this regard. The office is endeavouring to deal with simultaneous translation from now on.
I am interested in two issues regarding the appointment of external lawyers by the Attorney General. The first issue relates to criteria and the second to cost. On the question of criteria, I imagine there is a certain amount of pork-barrelling by Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats lawyers in the legal pork-barrel. Are there established guidelines or criteria for candidates being considered for appointment as members of legal teams, representatives at tribunals or otherwise, apart from the legal pork-barrelling? Would it not be wise if such criteria were publicly available?
The second point relates to cost. I am concerned about the enormous bills being run up. If the Government, through the Office of Public Works, were building a cow house there would be a tendering procedure and a competitive figure would result. There appears to be no tendering procedure from the point of view of appointing leading counsel to many of these tribunals and otherwise. Would it be wise to have such a tendering procedure because we are talking about people becoming millionaires out of tribunals? Would we get a better result if we had the criteria for appointments and a tendering procedure whereby, having established the criteria, there would be an invitation to tender on the part of leading barristers so we would get top barristers at the best cost so far as the State is concerned?
On the issue of EU transposition, the Attorney General's office circulated a list of those who have high competence in EU law. Quite frankly, the Deputy would be happy that it contains a good cross-section of the political divide.
I am thinking of the broader issues.
On the broader issue, the Deputy has a point. It is how it is structured. The Deputy is correct in saying how wealthy people become. It is a problem, and unfortunately I have a fair amount of experience of people being appointed to tribunals and how it operates in all the tribunals. There is a group who are not interested in these positions for the obvious reason. There are those who have been directly involved in cases and are out because of it. One moves into a separate category before getting anywhere. There is also the question of how we deal with it in terms of costs.
Frankly, if I can so say, and I lead the charge in taking the blame, the way in which we in this House provide for terms of references leaves much to be desired. Given that I propose them I will have to take the blame for much of it as we leave it far too open-ended. We do not give timescales or indicate when we want interim reports, and even when we do we do not follow them up. Deputy O'Keeffe's point is fair. If it was in another area – a cowhouse, an IT unit or a load of chairs – there would have been far more transparency. Last week I provided the resources. I am not saying all these people are not worth it or are not doing an excellent job and neither is Deputy O'Keeffe or anyone else. However, under the system we operate that is his point and I will not argue against him because it is a valid point.
This issue was raised last week as well. We have to look at how we deal with this issue because it is not a question of one tribunal or another, we have many of them. The question is where to go in the modules. The House can deal with that issue. Frankly, the Government cannot deal with it. If I tried to do it, the Deputy knows what would be said and I can understand that political point. The House has a view on that issue, otherwise these tribunals will go on and on. In other areas they will go on and on and the cost is enormous. I have to be honest and say to Deputy O'Keeffe that it is normally a case of trying to get suitable people to take the positions and link in and it is not so easy. In most of the recent vacancies it was not easy to get senior people to move from their present positions.
One could try a more open procedure.
The Attorney General and the Department of Finance have been looking at this issue. It is not a question of value for money. They are looking at a system which would be more open but not so open-ended. Frankly, in regard to all the tribunals, somewhere along the way this House has to say when it wants the final report and on what modules. One cannot say one wants a final report tomorrow and stop a module in the middle. One has to look at how it opens up because it is costly. Irrespective of what we say, and whatever we say in cross-fire across the House, recently a very senior international figure who referred to major cases taking place in the Soviet Union involving gas, oil and other issues of enormous proportions of resources, in the same breadth asked me how the corruption and fraud investigations were going in Ireland.
Was it the—
It is not funny.
I did not say it was funny.
It is not funny and we are not in that league. I am not against people investigating this, that and the other. I am not saying it is right or wrong and, it may be dangerous to say this, but let us be frank, when people do things which are wrong, they are wrong. When one speaks of a person getting €500 or €5,000 there are rules and they should be dealt with it but let us not put that in the same league as those in the multimillion category. We have to get real. Ultimately that feeds into the view of a country. It is not good for them. We are not in that league and we are not in the 1% bracket against the kind of things that take place internationally.
We are decent criminals.
Ultimately they are issues that can come up in modules or that I could have to answer questions on. I have no problem with any of those things. Ultimately it cannot go on endlessly, just talking about whether it is 500 this or 700 that. One sets oneself up in an image with huge international tribunals.
It is the longevity that is damaging.
What is the Taoiseach saying about corruption?
I would rather the Deputy did not say that because there is nobody in here arguing we do not have to deal with corruption. We have learned the lessons. Will the Deputy put himself in the league? I do not want to mention any names as cases are in progress. There are cases taking place where trillions are involved. All I am saying is we are not in that league. There is a way to deal with it and it cannot go on forever. Somebody looking at this country from the outside would say the tribunals were set up in 1997 and we are now on the eve of 2004. They will have to be structured. Nobody is talking about closing them down but there is a way of dealing with them. Deputy O'Keeffe's point is that we have to look at these issues and a better way of proceeding. They are matters for the House because the House set them up. It is a fair point and I will not argue politically against a fair point. That is what I am saying.
In the adjoining jurisdiction the Lord Chancellor is head of the Judiciary and sits as chairman of the Lords and is in the Cabinet. That is at one extreme and certainly that would not be welcome here. Our Attorney General is somewhere near the other extreme because he is adviser to the Government and has been given additional responsibilities by the courts. Presumably, therefore, he accounts to the courts for the exercise of those constitutional duties. In the past, when the Attorney General was a Deputy, as in Declan Costello's time, he took questions in the House. There is a precedent for the Attorney General being directly available and the Accounting Officer at that office appears before the Committee of the Public Accounts.
In the context of all of this, would the Taoiseach consider a halfway house, not in regard to specific cases because that is hived off to the DPP, where the Attorney General would make himself or herself available to discuss these issues with the relevant committee or committees of the House? Given that a reshuffle is on the way perhaps it is time to appoint a Minister of State at the Office of the Attorney General who could report to the House on these matters. I am not suggesting he or she would get involved in individual cases but on the general principles raised in the interesting discussion this morning.
I am aware there are many cases and precedents around this issue. In recent years, Attorneys General have made themselves available to committees of the House on different aspects. There are limitations on that as well as legal and constitutional limitations. Generally their office and department make themselves available to their senior official to answer issues. I will look at the legal limitations. The present Attorney General and the last Attorney General have an open mind on giving their views and information on cases as they arise.