This committee represents the first important move towards the reform of the procedure of the Houses of the Oireachtas. It has been brought forward by Minister John Bruton, who has been charged with Oireachtas reform as being such. This House should pay careful attention to what is being proposed here.
It is proposed that this committee of 18 Deputies and seven Senators should be charged with a number of functions. The first of these is that this committee should be responsible for the introduction of hearings on legislation in the Irish legislative system. It means under this particular motion that any matter, any proposal for legislation, can be referred by motion to the Joint Committee on Legislation. It might be the heads of a Bill or a draft Bill and this can be initiated by or with the consent of a member of the Government. Deputy Bruton in introducing this in the other House thought it was appropriate that this should be the manner in which this should be done on the establishment of the committee, that it might well be that as the committee develops its own procedures alternative ways of referral will be tried. The committee itself may play some role in selecting what it thought were appropriate matters. After an initial period this is going to be reconsidered.
There are a number of other matters which are also referred to this committee — such as dealing with Consolidation Bills. There was a special Joint Committee on the two Houses dealing with Consolidation Bills and its functions are now to be taken over by the new Committee. The question of private Bills is not being brought under the new Committee on Legislation. Private Bills occur very rarely indeed. They have their own special procedures, their own methods for hearing, and an undue number of complications would have been involved if they had been brought under the Committee on Legislation. Their function is not that of general legislation. Their function is that of providing for private matters — not so much nowadays for individuals but mainly for organisations, the amendment of charters and matters of this sort. While it was considered that it might have been cleaner to have it all together, it was ultimately decided that this was not so.
Another responsibility that is being given to this committee is in regard to law reform. It has been given a positive role in regard to the Law Reform Commission itself. That commission was established under the 1975 Act and it has since produced ten working papers and four reports. Like many other commission reports, these reports have received insufficient discussion in the Houses of the Oireachtas. They have had insufficient impact in general on legislation. By feeding the results of the work of the Law Reform Commission directly into the Committee on Legislation it is hoped that it will have its greatest input there. Also there is provision for this committee not only to examine the reports of the Law Reform Commission but, in fact, to initiate law reform studies under paragraph 1 (a), to keep the law under review and to formulate proposals for law reform and to report thereon to each House. That is another very important function.
I have already mentioned considering legislation at a very early stage which appears under paragraph 1 (a). That is a very important development. I just want to stress that point for a moment before I go on to deal with how Bills will ultimately be dealt with.
One of the problems of our system is that as far as we Members of the Oireachtas are concerned legislation is too far advanced on its assembly line before we have any notion whatsoever of what is going on. This has been a great difficulty in the operation of our system. The result is that all the discussions in regard to important legislation before it becomes congealed as a draft Bill are between members of pressure groups, members of the civil service with, at quite a late stage, Minister being involved. One of the main functions of this committee on legislation will be that at a very early stage there will he the input from the ordinary Member of the Legislature; that he or she will have an opportunity here through this committee, or through Seanad representatives on this committee, to help in the shaping of legislation at a very early stage. This is a reform of the highest importance.
Once a proposal, has reached the stage of a Bill, there is a provision here for the consideration of Bills in Committee in this Joint Committee. Instead of having a Committee Stage on the floor of the Dáil and Seanad, there will be a Committee Stage in Joint Committee which will allow for all the flexibility of the select committee procedure. When we were discussing the Courts-Martial Bill last week, tributes were paid to the Defence Act, 1952, which was considered for a long period in select committee and tributes were paid to the value of the work that was done in Committee in that case. I want to emphasise that none of the rights of the Seanad in regard to legislation are going to be impaired in any way by the new procedure. I want to follow through what will happen.
Let us assume, as is usually the case, that the Bill is initiated in the Dáil. The Bill will then go through its First Stage, that is its circulation, and a Second Stage debate in Dáil Éireann. A proposal is made in Dáil Éireann to send that legislation to the select committee and Seanad Éireann must concur. In other words, Dáil Éireann cannot by resolution deprive Seanad Éireann of its right to have that Bill dealt with as a normal Bill. This is very important. It is not just a question of a motion coming up and the Leader of the House bobbing up and saying "I move" and the Minister gabbling a few words and that is that. There can be a full Second Stage debate on that concurrence motion and if it happened to be the view of the Seanad that that Bill should not go to select committee the Seanad can debate it and there can be any broad amendment equivalent to the present Second Stage amendment denying a Second Reading because of a particular stated reason. It will be possible to put down to that concurrence motion an amendment denying the request to send it to this committee on the same grounds. There is no difficulty here in regard to the rights of the Seanad.
If the Bill is then sent to be considered in committee by this new Joint Committee on Legislation, the Senators will be represented there. It is almost certain that in the beginning the legislation that will be dealt with in this way will be technical, specialist legislation. This House is entitled to appoint seven Members to this particular committee and if there was a case that there was a Bill coming up which was a highly technical Bill it would be open to this House to vary its membership of that committee. The Seanad would be entitled to receive a report from the committee of selection discharging the present members and substituting others, so that we could ensure in regard to legislation of particular importance that the best team were assembled to represent the Seanad. Under what is proposed here, we have a great deal of flexibility and we have our own powers.
When a Bill has been considered in this new committee it will then be sent back to the House in which it was initiated. If that was in the Dáil, there would then be a Report Stage and a Final Stage in the Dáil and the Bill would then come to the Seanad. Since the Committee Stage had been dealt with in Joint Committee, it would come into the Seanad on Report Stage. It would be possible for Members of the Seanad to put down amendments on Report Stage. Though it is unlikely to happen after such serious consideration if in the course of a debate on Report Stage the Seanad could recommit the Bill in order that it could avoid the restriction of Report Stage debate to just one contribution. At the moment we have the power to recommit either a whole Bill or a section of a Bill into Committee and if it appears that the committee work has not been thoroughly done, that power would still rest with the Seanad. I draw the attention of the House to these very important new developments.
I pass on to some of the other functions of this joint committee on legislation. It is also proposed that the Joint Committee should exercise the functions presently exercised by the Seanad Committee on Statutory Instruments. I would like on this occasion to pay tribute to those Members of Seanad Éireann who since 1948 have contributed to the work of this Committee on Statutory Instruments. The committee was established on the proposal of the late Senator Luke Duffy who was then Secretary of the Labour Party and a Member of this House. It was reestablished after every general election since. The Seanad committee was set up to take a look at the maze of secondary legislation and it examines statutory instruments under six headings. First, it examined whether there was any charge on the public revenue. It also checked secondary legislation for any unusual or unexpected use of powers. It examines secondary legislation to ensure that there is no retrospective effects. It examined secondary legislation to ensure there was no unjustifiable delay in the making of orders or regulations under statute. It was entitled to report to Seanad Éireann seeking the elucidation of the form or the purport of any statutory instrument. Finally, it could draw the attention of the House to any defective drafting of statutory instruments.
I say that we should pay tribute on this occasion to the work that was done by this committee but I would also like to point out that it did suffer from the difficulties that we discussed earlier in regard to committees generally. It did suffer from the fact that adequate staff was not available in order to enable it to carry out its work. The chairman of the Seanad Committee on Statutory Instruments has had occasion to report back repeatedly to the Seanad in regard to this difficulty on staffing. If we look back over the record of the committee we will find there were times of great activity and times of lesser activity. Here again, we can notice a committee suffering at times because of lack of interest of members. That committee did an excellent job not just by what it reported here to Seanad Éireann but the existence of that committee and the work that it did in the early years had the effect of raising very considerably the standards of the implementation of statutes. Many times it drew attention to irregularities and it proposed improvements. These were gradually adopted and the whole of our system of secondary legislation has benefited.
There is one change in regard to this particular activity and that is that the new committee is not only entitled to recommend the annulment of a statute but it is also given the very valuable power of recommending the amendment of a statutory instrument to the House so that the House could say that it would recommend in turn that a statutory instrument should take the different form. This is a very interesting improvement.
In summary, the Joint Committee on Legislation is a new departure. It is going to be a committee whose members will have to put in a great deal of work. We want to change our system here in the Houses of the Oireachtas, to try to bring it more into line with the system in other countries, who have adapted to modern conditions by an increasing use of legislative committees, of hearings in regard to legislation, hearings in advance of legislation, of select committees examining legislation line by line off the floor of the House. If this is to be a success, then we are going to have to look for seven very capable, very hard-working Senators to play our part in this particular committee. I recommend the establishment of the committee.
