On behalf of the Labour group in the Seanad, I welcome the re-establishment of this Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies. The only deep regret the Labour group have is that it took so long to re-establish this committee. The original committee had two meetings only, had barely established their own working methods when they were dissolved at the time of the general election. It is a reflection on the slow procedures of the two Houses that it has taken from last May until this May to re-establish the committee. We cannot afford this kind of tardiness and this dilatory approach. It undermines a lot of what was said in the other House and what will be said today in this House about the important role of such a committee.
If the committee are that important, then I suggest they should have been re-established when the Dáil and Seanad sittings recommended after the general election. This point is worth making for future reference. This is the second of these innovatory specialist committees which evolved recently in the Oireachtas. First, we had the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities and then this Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies. After a great deal of pressure the EEC committee got re-established last December. That, in itself, was far too long. There was far too long a lag between May and December which effectively meant the committee began to meet in January to cope with the various draft directives and regulations which had issued from Brussels the previous May. Similarly, the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies should have been re-established at the beginning of November at the latest, and should by now be issuing their first reports.
Time has been lost. Indeed, the services of staff have been lost because I understand the clerk who was appointed to that committee has sat in his office waiting for the re-establishment of the committee and, in effect, his time has been wasted and public moneys have been wasted waiting for the committee to be re-established.
Since we now have these specialist committees, and since by the nature of them they are Joint Committees of both Houses, they will dissolve when we have a general election, it is not too soon to make a firm political commitment that they will be re-established as soon as both Houses come back into business themselves. The Joint Committee have a statutory basis so there is no question but that they would be re-established. A firm all-party commitment about the importance of this committee should ensure that they, too, would be very quickly re-established.
I should like to support Senator Martin. He is right in saying there should be Independent representation from this House on the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies. The Seanad has that kind of personal expertise and commitment to offer. It is recognised on all sides of the House that the Independent Members of the Seanad put in very conscientious time, do their work and do their homework, and have made very substantial contributions in the areas of operation of our State-sponsored bodies. What he said also struck a cord with me personally as a former Independent member.
It is an insult to the contribution they make at the moment, and can make, if there is not an Independent Member on the Joint Committee. There are two ways of doing it, as Senator Martin said. Either one of the four Senators should be an Independent Senator, or else the matter should be returned for consideration of enlarging the size of the Joint Committee. From my own personal experience on the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities, a committee of 11 is small to ensure a good working quorum for consideration of the work of the committee. The experience of the Joint Committee has been that, even with a committee of 26, it is sometimes difficult to get more than seven or eight to participate in a full Joint Committee session, or in a session of one of the sub-committees. A committee of 11 makes it difficult, I presume, to form sub-committees and this, in itself, will slow up the approach to their workload of the Joint Committee on State-sponsored Bodies. If they cannot form a number of sub-committees, they will have to consider their entire workload in full committee and, since their terms of reference, as has been mentioned, are to examine the reports and accounts and the overall operational results of the very significant number of State-sponsored bodies listed in Schedule A, and Gaeltarra Éireann listed in Schedule B, this is a very formidable workload.
There is a danger that the Joint Committee might get bogged down in examining one or two bodies—in examining CIE and RTE, for example—and a whole session might go by without the committee performing a very important preliminary task, that is, to have an overview of the present operation of the State-sponsored bodies. I should like to see the committee in a position to give both Houses of the Oireachtas a genuine sense of how chief executives and staff running the State-sponsored bodies view the statutory procedures under which they were set up. Do the legislation and the terms of reference they were given stand up to the experience of many years in operation, or are there substantial improvements which could be made in that regard? Are they able to put forward the kind of plans and proposals they want to? This kind of general overview of all the State-sponsored bodies listed in Schedules A and B should be completed within a period of a maximum of two years in order to allow the committee, in a normal span, to have further time to look in more depth at certain of the State-sponsored bodies which could be singled out.
If this task is to be placed on the shoulders of 11 people, therefore preventing the development of a structure of sub-committees, there will be very considerable problems in ensuring that this important overview of each of the bodies is completed within a two-year span.
Another vital matter in establishing a committee of this nature is the permanent staffing of the secretariat of the committee. As I understand it, the clerk appointed to the old committee remained the expectant awaiting clerk of this committee about to be re-established, but I have not heard any other firm commitment as to the back-up permanent staffing this committee will have. I would welcome a very specific indication on this from the Minister. Presumably the previous committee had an opportunity in their preliminary meetings to assess the minimum staff which would enable them to accomplish their task and, again, comparisons with the work of the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities are worth while.
It is worth recalling that the Joint EEC Committee—to give their short title—had two years of considerable teething problems in relation to getting a firm commitment for adequate permanent staff on the secretariat. This committee had to wait for a long time to be established. An equivalent committee were established in Britain in 1949 and have been operating since. We as a Parliament are very late indeed in establishing such a committee, given the immense economic significance of the State-sponsored bodies in our economic life. Given how long it took, first of all, to establish the committee at all and, secondly, how much delay there has been before their re-establishment by this motion in the Dáil and Seanad, it is vital that the committee should start with the adequate complement of staff. I would have thought the minimum the committee should have would be their clerk and at least two other permanent staff of senior standing, and they should also have secretarial assistance.
Apart from that, I am glad to see that the terms of reference ensure what looks like a commitment by the Minister for the Public Service to enable the Joint Committee to engage the services of persons with specialist or technical knowledge to assist them for the purpose of particular inquiries. This is absolutely essential if the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies are to approach their task with adequate expertise and back-up knowledge. It will be difficult for these 11 members to assess the accounts of State-sponsored bodies without very significant technical and specialist expertise available to them. The accounts of State-sponsored bodies, no more than the accounts of other companies, do not reveal very much, and they require very specialist assessment in order to get a true account of the performance and of the actual record of the State-sponsored body. It will be essential for the Joint Committee to use the power there in order to perform their scrutinising task on behalf of both Houses of the Oireachtas.
I also welcome the new paragraph (7) of the motion:
That the Joint Committee shall have powers to print and publish from time to time minutes of evidence taken before it together with such related documents as it thinks fit.
If the committee taken evidence from chief executives and senior members of State-sponsored bodies, and from other sectors of the economy affected, other experts, and publish this evidence, they will perform a very important service for Members of both Houses who can then be better informed about the role, the priorities and the problems of State-sponsored bodies, the difficulty at times in combining the emphasis on a necessity to be a trading corporation and, at the same time, to fulfil a valuable social function, the conflict at times which must face senior executives in CIE, for example, between remaining if possible reasonably within economic bounds and, at the same time, ensuring that they provide a social service and, in the interests of economising, do not pare down dramatically on the provision of a social service.
I am glad to learn that a number of chief executives have expressed a welcome for the establishment of this parliamentary committee. They are right to do so. They deserve to have a dialogue with a parliamentary committee to ensure that their pre-occupations are considered adequately by an expert committee of Parliament, with expertise available to them, with continuity of membership, so that there can be a substantial learning process by all members of the committee. Publication on a fairly consistent basis, of evidence taken by this Joint Committee would be of very significant benefit to both Houses and to the public generally, because there has not been sufficient general accountability or general feedback from the managers of our State-sponsored bodies, those who run them.
The various debates on the Estimates for Departments, or debates in either House when a Minister comes in looking for a further sum of millions for a State-sponsored body, have not been very constructive. They were random and discursive because Members were not equipped with adequate knowledge to assess the performance of the State-sponsored body.
The amount of employment given by State-sponsored bodies and the fact that they are about to embark on worker participation are matters members of the Joint Committee should be in a position to assess; also, the successful implementation of a commitment to industrial democracy, to worker participation, which hopefully will become a much more substantial feature in our industrial relations, the progress of a State-sponsored body and the matter I mentioned, the possibility that, in a number of instances, the original Act which may date from the twenties or the thirties may no longer be a sufficiently flexible framework for a State-sponsored body. There will be an opportunity for a parliamentary committee to consider the possibility of broadening or up-dating the statutory terms of reference of that State-sponsored body.
As well I would hope the fact that there is a parliamentary committee would have, in itself, a chain reaction in the State-sponsored bodies, that they will themselves standardise to some extent the way in which they present their accounts and try to ensure full understanding and disclosure in those accounts, that they will seek to bring out reports and assessments for the members of the State-sponsored bodies committee and that these will be made available generally to Members of both Houses.
Again, the experience of the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities has been that there is an important role for these committees in meeting interested groups and even interested individuals in the community, either inviting written submissions or going further and having oral hearings with these interested groups, with both sides of industry, with other affected sectors. This is an active role for the committee as a Joint Committee of the two Houses and enables Parliament to be better briefed, to be closer to the sectors affected, by giving them an opportunity of putting their views to a representative committee of Parliament.
Unless this committee are established rapidly and given adequate back-up services to enable them to get into gear very fast there is a danger that the Oireachtas will appear to be becoming more and more irrelevant to the complexity of modern Government and administration. The plenary debates on the floor of the Houses will not stand up to critical scrutiny because it will be far too much a case of one Deputy after another, or one Senator after another, getting up and talking in very general terms, mentioning a few individual grievances from personal knowledge, or from knowledge of one or two constituents, or whatever it may be. There will be a failure to realise that the complex nature of the operations and activities of State-sponsored bodies cannot be commented upon without adequate scrutiny, the assistance of experts and, indeed, an opportunity to hear and receive written and oral submissions from the senior managements of these bodies, and an opportunity to hear and receive written and oral submissions from affected groups in society.
I welcome the establishment of this committee and I reiterate my support for what Senator Martin said. Membership of the committee from the Seanad should include an Independent Senator because of the commitment, expertise and independence of those Members. There is a value in that membership of the Joint Committee and it is an insult to Independent Members and a denigration of the different kinds of contribution the Seanad can make to a Joint Committee to deny them representation.