Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 29 Jun 1983

Vol. 101 No. 3

Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies: Motion.

Professor Dooge

I move:

1. That a Select Committee consisting of 4 members of Seanad Éireann (none of whom shall be a member of the Government or a Minister of State) be appointed to be joined with a Select Committee to be appointed by Dáil Éireann to form a Joint Committee (which shall be called the Joint Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies) to examine the Reports and Accounts and overall operational results of State-sponsored Bodies engaged in trading or commercial activities referred to in the Schedule hereto and to report thereon to both Houses of the Oireachtas and to make recommendations where appropriate.

2. That, after consultation with the Joint Committee, the Minister for the Public Service with the agreement of the Minister for Finance may include from time to time the names of further State-sponsored Bodies in the Schedule and, with the consent of the Joint Committee and the Minister for Finance, may delete from the Schedule the names of any bodies.

3. That, if so requested by a State-sponsored Body, the Joint Committee shall refrain from publishing confidential information regarding the Body's activities and plans.

4. That the Joint Committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records and, subject to the consent of the Minister for the Public Service, to engage the services of persons with specialist or technical knowledge to assist it for the purpose of particular inquiries;

5. That the Joint Committee, previous to the commencement of business, shall elect one of its members to be Chairman, who shall have only one vote.

6. That all questions in the Joint Committee shall be determined by a majority of votes of the members present and voting and in the event of there being an equality of votes the question shall be decided in the negative.

7. That the Joint Committee shall have power to print and publish from time to time minutes of evidence taken before it together with such related documents as it thinks fit.

8. That every report which the Joint Committee proposes to make shall on adoption by the Joint Committee be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas forthwith whereupon the Joint Committee shall be empowered to print and publish such report together with such related documents as it thinks fit.

9. That 4 members of the Joint Committee shall form a Quorum of whom at least 1 shall be a member of Dáil Éireann and at least 1 shall be a member of Seanad Éireann.

Schedule

Aer Lingus, Teoranta

Aerlínte Éireann, Teoranta

Aer Rianta, Teoranta

The Agricultural Credit Corporation Limited

Arramara Teoranta

Bord na Móna

British and Irish Steam Packet Company Limited

Ceimicí Teoranta

Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, Teoranta

Córas Iompair Éireann

Electricity Supply Board

Fóir Teoranta

Industrial Credit Company Limited

The Irish Gas Board

Irish Life Assurance Company Limited

Irish National Petroleum Corporation Limited

The Irish National Stud Company Limited

Irish Shipping Limited

Irish Steel Limited

National Building Agency Limited

Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta

Óstlanna Iompair Éireann Teoranta

Radio Telefís Éireann

Údarás na Gaeltachta

Voluntary Health Insurance Board.

This concerns the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies. Here we have seven Members of the Dáil and four Members of the Seanad. Indeed, I do not know why this committee tends to be smaller than the others but these are the numbers that were agreed in discussion. This committee has been in operation since 1976. It has done very valuable work in regard to our commercial State-sponsored bodies. I understand the committee has reported on 18 of the State-sponsored bodies. It is well down the list which appears in the Schedule at the bottom of page 127 and the top of page 128 of the Order Paper.

Members might like to ask, "What is going to happen? Is this committee going to run out of work mid-stream?" I do not think so. I think it will be like the painting of the Forth Bridge. There are always a gang of painters on the Forth Bridge and when they come to one end they go back to the other end and start over again. This should be the way this committee should operate. When they reach the end of the Schedule of these commercial State-sponsored bodies they will find that there will be among those they have already dealt with at least one whose circumstances have changed, or whose problems are of such particular difficulty that in fact they will have ample work to do in regard to them. I would like to take the opportunity of congratulating those who were members of this committee in previous sessions on the very excellent work they produced. They have set a high standard for the new committee to live up to.

Mr. E. Ryan

I would like to comment on the question of the number on this committee. When this was raised a few weeks ago I made the point that it was a particularly small committee. My apprehension was that it would be extremely difficult to get a quorum to keep this committee going. It is difficult to understand why it is so small compared to several of the other committees which are at least twice as big. From my own experience I know this committee could not have kept going as it did were it not for the fact that we were lucky enough to have three or four very dedicated members who attended almost every meeting. They included the Ministers for Defence and Health who attended almost every meeting at that time. I can only hope that we will have similar members on this occasion. It is doubtful whether this committee will be successful from that point of view. I echo Senator Dooge's question of why it was decided to have this so small compared to the other committees.

I agree, on the other hand, that it is going to be very hard to provide members for all of these committees. I could have seen the argument if all the committees were in the region of 11 to 15 members so as to enable sufficient members to be found for meetings of all those committees. Why some of the committees should be so big and this one so small is difficult to understand. Moving away from this committee, it is going to be very hard to find enough Members to provide membership for all of these committee. By that I mean Members who will attend them with reasonable dilligence. I am doubtful whether it is going to be possible to find sufficient Members who will attend. I was a member of the EEC Committee for a while and even though there were 25 or 26 members we very often did not succeed in getting a quorum. I was there on a number of occasions when meetings had to be abandoned because of a lack of a quorum. In a sense I am arguing against myself because that big committee was abandoned on many occasions and the small committee always managed to carry on. I hope that we will find sufficient members and that they will be sufficiently diligent to ensure that the meetings can always proceed.

To add to this difficulty in regard to the committee we are discussing now, the position in regard to several of the other committees is that there is the provision that if a member cannot attend somebody else can act as a substitute for him, but for this committee which is so small and which will have difficulty in getting an attendance, there is no such provision. That adds to the mystery as to why this committee has been singled out for making it as difficult as possible to provide a quorum for it. Certainly the EEC committee, the Legislation committee and the Third World committee all have provision for Members to take the place of those who cannot attend, but not the Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies.

Mrs. Robinson

I should like to support the points made in some detail by Senator Ryan on the small size of the committee which has such an important task to accomplish. This point was also made by the Leader of the House, Senator Dooge. He referred to the fact that this was done by agreement. Who are the agreeing people? It is interesting to note the imbalance in size and also the lack of any provision for alternate members in the strict sense and for ordinary Members of this House or the other House to attend meetings of this Joint Committee. This is particularly interesting and questionable at the moment in view of the importance of the role of the committee. At this stage of our economic development some of the most major policy decisions and considerations are ones which affect State-sponsored bodies. I would imagine that if Members of this House knew that a particular subject was being discussed before the Joint Committee there would be a considerable interest possibly in attending a particular meeting. It might be because of the geographical location of the State-sponsored body or because of some problem that had arisen that Members would wish to go along to it.

To what extent do we have flexibility? Would it be possible now in this House to propose an amendment to insert an equivalent paragraph to No. 2 relating to the EEC committee providing that in the absence of a member at a meeting, who is a Member of Seanad Éireann, another Member of Seanad Éireann, may with the authority of the absent member take part in the proceedings and vote in his stead and that Members of Seanad Éireann not being members of the Joint Committee may attend meetings and take part in the proceedings without having a right to vote? If we have the possibility of introducing that amendment it would allow greater participation than is strictly allowed by the terms of reference. Eleven members out of a potential pool of 200, if one omits Ministers and Ministers of State, seems to be a very small number. I wonder whether four members allows any Independent participation. I do not know what the intended composition of this committee will be but it would be regrettable if the size of the committee excluded any participation by any Independent Senator who might wish to participate.

I find that this committee has a remarkably small membership in comparison to the Joint Services Committee. Why should the committee dealing with the restaurant and other facilities be so much larger than a committee dealing with one of the most vital areas of our economic and commercial lives? I share the general experience of Members who served on committees of the difficulty of getting a quorum at many of these meetings. Yet, this is a broader criticism of priorities for Members of the House. I calculate, taking the committees we are establishing this afternoon by these motions, on their present membership there will be a total membership of 41. Obviously one individual might be a member of more than one committee but given that the Seanad sits for less than an average of 50 days in the year and that a number of the committee meetings coincide with days when the Seanad is meeting, it does not seem to be an intolerable or undue burden on legislators that they would participate in at least one of these working committees if they have an interest in and are prepared to be involved in that work. Although the experience has not been a very happy one that is part of an overall criticism of the priorities in the legislative area which have dominated the political experience in both Houses. Those priorities should be changed and more attention focussed on the important work that can be done in these substantive committees. Even at this late stage serious consideration should be given to expanding the membership and, in particular, expanding participation by Members of this House in such an important committee.

Acting Chairman (Séamas de Brún)

In connection with the suggestion made by Senator Robinson that it would be desirable to have such an amendment, the House should have notice of such a suggestion or such an amendment. If it is agreed by the House Senator Dooge might like to deal with it later.

Mrs. McGuinness

If it is of any assistance to the House I would be pleased to second Senator Robinson's proposal that we should amend the motion in this way because I, too, share her feelings and those of Senator Eoin Ryan. This committee is of particular importance because I remember well, at the stage when I was working on the staff of Leinster House some years ago drafting parliamentary questions, that one of the great frustrations of Members of the Oireachtas was that they could exercise so little control over and had so little information about the workings of State and semi-State bodies. These, are after all, meant to be in public ownership, the commercial and other types of bodies which, theoretically, are owned by the people, and yet the people's representatives in the form of Members of the Dáil and Seanad had virtually no access to information or participation in the control of these bodies. The reply most frequently obtained to any request for information, whether important or trivial, was that the Minister had no responsibility in that area. There were a great many people working on policy creation at the time who were extremely anxious to set up a committee of the Houses like this which would give the Houses the important principle of being able to look into the affairs of the State and semi-State bodies and give them, not a means of interfering in the day-to-day running of them, but a means of overseeing what was going on and participating in what was in fact the public side of our industry and commerce. That is a most important principle.

There is no point in saying that a particular body is in public ownership if the public through their representatives have no part in or information about the running of it, if it is simply a matter of handing it over to a sort of sub-bureaucracy however virtuous those persons may be. I would be most anxious to see this committee continuing to be as effective as it has been in the past. It has been an effective committee and one which has played a very important part in the whole area of the companies it oversees. It is because of that that I would agree with the Senators who have already spoken that it seems a pity that this committee should be so small. For instance, as Senator Robinson said, we appear to be putting the importance of our restaurant as a greater priority than the importance of a committee such as this. After all, the restaurant no doubt exists for the convenience of Members of the Oireachtas but we can hardly say that it is of major importance to the nation that we should just be comfortable in our restaurant. I would very much agree about that and also about the business of the substitution of other Members and the ability of other Members to attend which would be covered by the proposal made by Senator Robinson to include in the motion on the Joint EEC Committee.

The size of the committee is of great relevance to the Independent Members. It appears that if the Seanad is to nominate only four Members on some of the committees there may be half an Independent, or the leg of an Independent Member from the knee down. That may be sufficient to enable us to kick some of the semi-State bodies but would hardly be very useful otherwise as the kick could not be directed by any brain. That is another disability of having the committee so small. Senator Dooge is correct in putting forward what he described as the Forth Bridge principle, that these committees do not come to an end of their work. Obviously, it takes a long time to go through the various bodies that have to be investigated and it would be desirable that the committee should start to look at the first ones again when they have completed the list. There is certainly nothing that would suggest that it would be desirable that the committee should stop their work and say they have looked at all these bodies, produce the results of their investigation and cease. Obviously, conditions and economic policies change and so on and we need to have a continuing look at them rather than a simply once-for-all look.

Mr. Robb

I should like again to draw the attention of Senators to paragraph 4 of the motion. That is a very important paragraph because it empowers the Joint Committee to send for persons, papers and records. In relation to the whole democratic process there has not been enough consideration given as to what we mean by persons. The implication behind that paragraph seems to be more concentrated on the expert or the specialist, the man with the special technical knowledge as being the person appropriate to be called before the Joint Committee. It has certainly been my experience in the working of a hospital that this is where we get ourselves into trouble. When we are considering drawing up evidence, obtaining information or ideas, we should see it as a tripartite matter, there is the consumer, the operative and the institutions. In that respect if we take hospitals the last person to be consulted about the workings of a hospital is usually the person for whom the building was built in the first place and the person who pays the salaries and wages of those who work in it. I should like to emphasise that we should in consideration of what has been incorporated into paragraph 4 be clear that we are not just considering experts but also the sort of submissions that can be made by the consumer through his representative, by the operatives who work in the semi-State bodies as well as the institutional men who run them.

Professor Dooge

Again, I am thankful to Senators who have expressed views in regard to this committee. There are a few themes that ran through this short debate. One of them was the question of the size of this committee. Senator Ryan, towards the end of his contribution, began to realise that he was driven by his usual good logic to provide the answer to the points he had raised in his opening sentences. The main fact about this committee is that they have worked well and have not had the difficulties of quorum of the larger committees. I do not want to make too much of that but the Seanad should realise that this is a particular type of committee. It takes up, two or three State bodies and seeks to examine their operations. Unlike the EEC Committee that we were talking about in the last motion, when Senator Robinson said that the Members who will be nominated next week will find 100 documents on 100 topics waiting for them. The work of this committee is very concentrated. It does appear that this has been one of the most efficient of our committees.

I might suggest that whereas the contrast that has been made here as regards the size of this committee and the other committee may not be arguments that this committee is too small but arguments that the other committees are too large. It may well be that the difficulties of these other committees have arisen from their very size. This may well apply to this question of alternates and substitutes. I would like to say, firstly, in regard to Members of the Seanad attending meetings, I do not think there is any difficulty whatsoever in this. In regard to any committee of this type the presumption is that it can meet in public if it wants to or can decide that it will meet in private. The committee itself, as I understand it, can under Standing Orders provide by its own resolution that any Member of either House can attend. There is no need to amend Standing Orders in regard to the question of observers. Perhaps this question of observers could go a bit too far. This committee is trying to deal with things on a narrow basis. It is not like the case of taking an EEC regulation and saying, "Let us have as many minds as possible because we do not know what the various possible secondary ramifications are". Here we have a committee that focuses on a particular topic. If there were to be a large, or even a medium-sized fluctuating attendance the success of the meetings of this committee would be in jeopardy. It would alter the nature of the committee and might indeed impair the efficiency of which there is evidence. This also applies to the question of alternates. I believe this is a question that could well be considered but I would ask those who make the presumption that it is necessarily better that there should be a system of alternates in every committee to consider that this is not necessarily so. The question of alternates is good if we have difficulties in regard to a quorum, if we have the position of people who are being overloaded. Senator Robinson is a practising lawyer and well acquainted with the system of alternates that occurs in the Four Courts.

The position is that this is not necessarily good for all of our committees because if we are to have a system of alternates, there should be a system of nominated alternates who are nominated at the beginning and you have a single substitute for an individual and no more. We certainly would not add to the efficiency of this committee and might endanger the efficiency of other committees if we have a system whereby somebody decides he has too much constituency correspondence to go to a meeting and he looks around for somebody to attend on his behalf at the committee.

A committee like this that takes up a particular semi-State body and makes a deep study of that over a matter of six to nine months is a committee that needs continuity above all. If we have a change in personnel from meeting to meeting this might impair its work. I would suggest that we establish the committee. Those Senators who are members of this committee can keep in mind what has been said in this debate and that the committee should experiment in regard to the question of involving others. If the committee even wanted to have a very limited system of alternates I do not think the lack of power here would impede that committee. If it does, and the committee is agreed that its efficiency would be increased let it come and look to this House and look to the other House for an amendment of the terms on which it is established.

I would hesitate at this stage to say that the case for alternates and the case for putting in a provision like the provision in the EEC Committee is one that is so compelling that we should make the change now rather than let this committee get on with the work. The main thing about this committee is the fact that the committee has substantially worked. Senator Robinson mentioned the difficulties in regard to the numbers. She has forgotten, of course, that we still have to establish our committee on women's rights and we still have to establish——

Mrs. Robinson

I have not forgotten that, I assure the Senator.

Professor Dooge

——the committee that was mentioned earlier in regard to marriage breakdown. I have been informed, since this point was raised earlier in this House, that agreement has been reached on the terms of reference of that committee and it is hoped that the expediency motion will be introduced in Dáil Éireann tomorrow. We hope it is on the way. On the point of this wide membership of committees, I think this is another indication that we may well find ourselves in six months time coming back to the Houses of the Oireachtas to reduce the membership of committees such as the Joint Services Committee and others rather than increasing the membership of this particular committee.

I take the point that Senator Robb made about the operations of this committee and its use of this ancient privilege of sending for persons and papers, that they should not be narrow in regard to the scope. I do not think the committee will be. The best guarantee we have for the success of this committee is to set it up on the same terms as before and hope it will do as good a job as it did before. After all, 18 first class reports since 1976, in spite of the interruptions of elections is a substantial achievement. We should indicate to the members of the committee that if they wish to have their terms of reference amended in any way they should not be slow to come back here to the House.

I agree also with Senator McGuinness in regard to the argument that is appropriate that these commercial State companies, which are in a sense in public ownership, should be subject to some scrutiny. We want to be careful here that no system of committee that we set up would nullify the very purpose of these bodies. The purpose of these bodies was to leave them free in regard to their day-to-day operations. It is right that we should inquire into what they are doing, but we must be very careful as to the exact meaning we attach to the word "inquisition". This word can have a number of different meanings.

I urge the House to adopt this Motion No. 2 in the form it is in on the Order Paper and ask the committee, after it has been working for six months or so, to report back to the Seanad in regard to its operations and to any changes that might be made.

Question put and agreed to.