Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Oct 1993

Vol. 137 No. 11

Oireachtas Research Facilities: Motion.

Professor Lee

I move:

That Seanad Éireann deplores the lack of research facilities necessary to enable the Oireachtas discharge its responsibilities effectively; and calls on the Government to make a specific budgetary allocation for the resources required to permit the Oireachtas play its proper role in policy making.

I welcome the Minister. This motion may appear academic but it concerns one of the most important issues Government has to confront, although it may lack electoral appeal. The quality of our decision making is one of the key factors determining the performance of Ireland and the mechanisms in the Oireachtas concerning the contributions of backbenchers leave much to be desired.

I put down the motion because many people have asked me what use the Seanad has in policy making. I have said it is virtually no use. I qualified that by saying the Dáil also is of virtually no use in that respect. I say that with regret but it is difficult to think of any major changes in legislation or policy that have arisen as a result of contributions from the Dáil or Seanad in recent times. This is particularly true in social and economic policy, which is the subject of much legislation. Individual Members exert influence through party channels, representations, etc. but the Dáil and Seanad as Houses of the Oireachtas make singularly little difference to policy formulation.

There is a view among political scientists that Deputies and Senators are little more than glorified messenger boys whose function is as mediators between the public and real decision makers in Government. There is some truth in that. I do not decry that role, it is an important one and historically it has been played effectively. It is the human face of legislation in many ways and that is important for the legitimacy of parliamentary institutions. A cynic might scoff that it is much the safest activity for ordinary Members of the Oireachtas and if they were able to turn their minds to policy making the results might not be an unmixed blessing. That would be an unduly cynical approach to take at present, whatever about the past. The present Oireachtas is by far the best educated we have ever had and we are going further in that direction.

If Members want to contribute to policy making, what resources are at their disposal to enable them to contribute effectively? The resources available within the Oireachtas are grossly inadequate. Members can only contribute effectively if they can process the flow of information available on policy making issues.

The relative positions of Members of the Oireachtas and other contributors to the policy formulation process within society have changed dramatically to the great disadvantage of the Oireachtas in the last generation, perhaps the last decade. Twenty years ago there was nothing like the number of outside bodies, whether consultants, statutory bodies, or pressure groups of employers, trade unions, farmers and others, with relatively well-resourced research support. The supply of information coming to Oireachtas members is almost entirely from outside. We are passive recipients of information generated elsewhere in accordance with the agendas of those bodies. We are in no position to process the information in a consistent, systematic or sustained way. That is widely recognised and is not an exaggeration.

This point struck me forcefully during the debate on the Statistics Bill in this House on 16 June. It was a perfectly sensible Bill which contained reference to the regular contact between the director of the Central Statistics Office and users of statistics such as Government Departments, the EC and research bodies. Those were mentioned, among others. One would have hoped Members of the Oireachtas would have been thought of as potential users of CSO material but they were unmentioned. It occurred neither to the drafters of the legislation nor anyone else that the Oireachtas might be a significant user of that information. It was a revealing and realistic oversight because the Oireachtas is not in a position to be an informed user of the body of statistics on which so much policy has to be based.

We are inundated with documentation, reports and statistics. Those statistics come predominantly in the form of supporting data for arguments advanced by reports, whether from commissions, Government Departments, public or private vested interests. Virtually no "uncontaminated" data comes to these Houses; it all comes as partisan evidence in support of an argument. The arguments may be good or bad but the information we receive has been packaged for various purposes and little of it has been designed to enable us — there is no reason why it should — to influence policy effectively.

This has been compounded by EC membership which has exposed us to another flood of information we are cannot effectively process. There are any number of OECD reports. We are asked to look not only at Irish statistics but to put them in comparative perspective. Whatever chance we have of understanding something about our country, trying to assess how that data is used comparatively is understandably beyond the time, capacity and resources of nearly every Member of the Oireachtas. We are more and more at the mercy of the interpretations put on the data by whoever the policy makers of the moment may be.

That is also the case with the media. If we look at the role of the media 20-25 years ago compared to today, it was nowhere as influential in terms of processing material and delivering opinions which are picked up by Members of the Oireachtas and then, in a sense, domesticated into their own opinions where these suffice. In other words, the sources of information have expanded greatly outside. The research resources at the disposal of a whole range of bodies seeking to influence policy have expanded greatly while the resources at the disposal of the Oireachtas, as far as I can see, have remained static for the last 20 years. There is perhaps an extra body here or there, such as an analyst or a consultant, in the committees but it falls far short of what is required for the effective discharge of the role of policy makers or even of having a marginal influence on policy. I am not deluding myself that the Oireachtas will ever become the chief policy maker, but it could have a significant role to play in policy making which it does not have at present.

I will give a couple of examples of what I have in mind about assumptions pervading reports which then tend to become conventional wisdom. I will take examples that are well known and, I hope, uncontroversial. The Culliton report has been cited not infrequently in the last couple of years in this Chamber and elsewhere. One of its sections is cited ad nauseam in the media and frequently by politicans and educationalists. Between 1971 and 1986, the number of accountants more than trebled and the number of auctioneers and lawyers doubled but the number of engineers increased by less than 50 per cent. This is partly a question of attitudes which needs to be addressed through a new approach to the system of education and training, especially by raising the status and quality of technical education.

That is a very well known quotation and is advanced as decisive evidence in favour of the general Culliton thrust that we need to change our education system to make it more orientated towards enterprise and particularly engineering. I am a strong supporter of having the highest quality of technical and technological education possible. I am, however, highly sceptical of the approach adopted towards the best way of achieving that by most of those talking about it.

Allow me to examine that quotation. It is meant to imply that the education system, and particularly higher education, is not producing sufficient numbers of engineers compared to the relatively parasitic auctioneers and lawyers. Is that true? There is nothing in the report about actual output; it is about numbers increasing in Ireland. It does take the slightest account, therefore, of differential emigration rates which could be considerable between engineers and accountants. It does not distinguish between different types of engineers — civil, electrical and mechanical. Once one begins to decompose this it may not mean what it purports to mean.

I rang the Higher Education Authority to see if it could provide simple data which could be read in a less obfuscatory form. Somebody there went to the trouble of digging out and providing me with figures which seemed to say the exact opposite to what Culliton said. The same qualification would apply to that as would apply to the Culliton report; they were global figures. It may be that in breaking them down one would find that there was some justification for the line of approach adopted here. At face value this is simply an assumption masquerading as evidence.

I would very much like to have in the resources of the Oireachtas research assistants whom one could ask to dig out the correct data. This would allow one to formulate a response and identify whether the argument is valid or invalid in that particular context. No individual will have the time to do that and it ought not to be the function of other bodies around the country to be bothered about providing data for Oireachtas discussions. The sort of research assistant I have in mind would be able to contribute significantly for all Members of the Oireachtas who have questions or suspicions about the use of evidence in these documents. I am not suggesting that the use of evidence is deliberately misleading. There can also be misuse of evidence by people who do not understand what they are saying, that is a different matter, but in terms of following up use of evidence as conveyed in these reports, simple reports, I am not talking about esoteric peripheral matters; I am talking about reports which influence the agenda of public discussion and which determine the framework within which Members have their assumptions significantly influenced.

Let me look at the National Development Plan; again I will confine myself to education, and this refers to Culliton in a way. In talking about the vocational, preparation and training measure, the National Development Plan refers to "the need to address the strong criticism of academic bias in educational provision for the 16-19 year age group in the Culliton report and in the OECD 1991 report, reviews of national policy for education. These reports highlight the need for a more balanced education with a strengthened technical vocational dimension within the second level education system." On the face of it, that seems a very reasonable proposition. What one would not deduce from that is that the Culliton report on that particular issue has been very seriously challenged by John Sheehan of UCD, among others, in the Irish Banking Review concerned with basic use of data. It is not a question of ideology or education policy; it is a question of whether the data on which the conclusions are based is valid.

There are other examples of the way reports, presumed to be evidence, and which we must accept at face value as evidence, are in many cases simply selecting the type of data, quite arbitrarily, which appear to sustain the pre-existing assumptions of those who present these reports. The Oireachtas must have some way of submitting questionable data at the behest of individual Members who know something about that subject, and subjecting them to independent scrutiny. This scrutiny would considerably raise the game of those submitting reports to the Oireachtas.

The range of assumptions which dominates policy-making consensus is very narrow. Many of them may be right, they may be intelligent, but their conventional wisdom in socio-economic policy is very narrow indeed. One of the areas from which we should draw ideas is the so-called third strand which has representation on the national, economic and social forum, but which is, itself, grossly under-resourced in terms of research compared with representatives of the other social partners. If the Oireachtas is anxious to broaden the range of opinion it is getting and which it can try to evaluate, then the Government could do a lot worse than provide research facilities for these grossly under-resourced voluntary community groupings which are now part of the third strand but do not have the resources of the other better-endowed social partners.

The Oireachtas Library performs a valiant task in hopeless circumstances. Its resources have remained static for several years. The Oireachtas has not kept in step with private organisations and it is now singularly less competent to evaluate policy and participate in policy making than it was ten to 20 years ago.

Mr. Norris

I am happy to second the motion. It is not surprising that the proposer and seconder are representatives of the university system and both practising academics because, as such, we understand the significance of research in presenting material intelligently.

I differ from Senator Lee in describing the Oireachtas as useless. I do not think the Oireachtas is useless. I am perhaps less enthusiastic about the Lower House, but I see a value in this House, a value which is not shared by the Department of Finance because, apart from anything else, I believe our wages are ludicrous. The majority of politicians are too gutless to say we are grossly under-paid for the work we do, especially those who do work and most politicians do.

I will give a couple of examples because, in a way, I was challenged by Senator Lee to do so. During my term — although this is egomaniacal because I can remember my contributions and this is probably true of all Members of Parliament — I got three and a half pages into a budget in regard to tax incentives for the inner city courtesy of the present Taoiseach, Deputy Reynolds. I was pleased it happened because it had some impact.

Legislation to change in the law on homosexuality, an important social matter, originated in the Dáil, but there is no doubt that the impetus came from a series of challenging and informed debates which took place in this House. In regard to the Childcare Act, a former Senator, Brendan Ryan, and I got a new section included after it had been passed in the Dáil. Arguments made in this House resulted in the inclusion of that section. Children's lives will be saved by that section, yet this was not reported in any newspaper. Perhaps, if we had a spat on the Order of Business, something like "Cathaoirleach chastises Norris" would have been reported.

An Cathaoirleach

Again.

Mr. Norris

Again. Luckily I am not a political masochist. The Seanad played a crucial role in all of these areas. All Members could list similar examples, it is not a prerogative of the Independent Senators, although we are particularly good. All sides make valuable and important contributions.

In case I lose the run of myself and develop what Professor Mahaffy called verbal diarrhoea, which was occasionally associated with mental constipation, I would like to place on the record details of our conditions of work where we are supposed to do research. We are asked to make bricks without straw. Working conditions are intolerable and so far as the University Senators are concerned, they break the Factory Acts. We pass legislation relating to the workplace, yet we work in conditions which would not be tolerated on the factory floor. Although there has been a slight improvement and the Cathaoirleach has been helpful in this regard, I quote from a report by SIPTU about our offices.

While the office measures approximately 250 square feet, the effective working area is reduced to approximately half this level. This equates to approximately 60 square feet per person. Current suggested good practice dictates that this is insufficient. Given the workspace requirements of the office I would be unhappy with less than 100 square feet per person. Basically we have an overcrowding situation.

The building is a sealed building, with fresh air and heating being provided be means of an air conditioning system. There appears to be no mechanism for local regulation or control, and on the day of my visit the air quality was very poor. A floor mounted fan has been introduced some time ago in an attempt to provide air movement. This is totally unsatisfactory, even before the safety implications of such a fixture are considered.

Although located on the ground floor of the building, there are very low levels of natural light in the office. The proximity of the windows to street traffic and what would appear to be infrequent cleaning, taken together with the orientation of the building, conspire to ensure a dark location. Vertical blinds are located on the windows, but are inaccessible because of workstation layout.

Lighting in the office is provided by 12 fluorescent tubes, but it is clear that little thought has been given to either matching or optimizing these fixtures. [As a result of American research there is one which can artificially produce natural daylight. We should have this as it would be good for our wellbeing.] The outcome is an oppressive lighting system.

The floor is covered with carpet strips with nails protruding, and causing a trip hazard, at traffic routes. The saddle boards are not sloped and also constitute a trip hazard at doorways. Connection wires for phones and fax trail across the floor, again causing a hazard. In general the approach to wiring is very untidy. The fan, mentioned earlier, also has a trailing flex.

Within the small office area there are nine separate phones and unguarded dot matrix printers. Noise levels can therefore be excessive for office location. Access/egress is reduced, because of layout, two feet at one point — again a sign of the overcrowding which exists.

Significant amounts of paper are kept in the office and inadequate storage facilities appear to exist. Given the potential resulting fire hazard, it is surprising that no fire extinguisher is available or that no training in dealing with such a situation has taken place.

To summarise we have a situation of overcrowding, inadequate ventilation, inadequate lighting, excessive noise and a multitude of potential hazards. It is clear that little regard has been paid to the fact that there is a requirement for people to work in those surroundings.

While on my celebrated trip to Australia, I did some research into their facilities in this regard. The equivalent of a backbench Senator has not only one office for him or herself, but also has a suite of offices complete with a kitchen, sleeping accommodation, if there are overnight sessions, two secretaries and a computer system where one may pull out information about one's own constituency, other constituencies, voting systems, etc., in other words, information technology is available at one's fingertips. Research assistants are also available. What have we got? We have none of these things. We have appalling office conditions.

I am glad Senator Lee mentioned the Library. It is an outrage. It is a nineteenth century mess operated by decent people of extraordinary goodwill and intelligence. I do not know how they manage to extract the kind of information they do from this pile. They provide a good service but their lives are not made easy by this system.

As Members of the Oireachtas we are not trained to read legislation. I believe a crash course for people who are elected for the first time is essential. Although I do not begrudge Senator Lee or those elected on the NUI panel, I bewail the defeat of Mr. Brendan Ryan because he took this House seriously. He read legislation in detail and had, over many years, acquired the capacity to understand the specialised language of legislation. Having heard his clear speeches, Members such as myself could parachute into the House and put down intelligent amendments without having read everything in detail or, perhaps, without understanding it. We get no training or assistance in drafting legislation. Perhaps there is a money saving element involved because the Government never allows legislation emerge, no matter how sensible, from the Opposition or Independent benches.

We do not have a proper computer information base. We should be able to link into and pull out national statistics from our offices and we should have training in this regard. Perhaps this is available, I know it is available to secretaries, but I do not know it is available for us. That is the scale of priorities. Secretaries are given training in this regard, but we are either too intelligent or too stupid to be able to use a computer. Unpaid American research assistants are available on a part-time basis. What they think of the Irish parliamentary system defeats my imagination.

Senator Lee has put his finger on an important issue. We are under-resourced, under-serviced and underpaid. In terms of physical access, if one wants to do research, how does one get in? I love this place and I come in to my office each day because there is always something to do. We get an enormous amount of mail each day. Perhaps it would be a good idea if we had some sort of recycling system because most of this mail is garbage and we could save a few trees. From 9 p.m. on Friday night to 9 a.m. on Monday one cannot get into one's office. I have been trusted with a key to my office in Trinity College and I frequently call in at weekends when I have to correct a paper or prepare to travel abroad, yet I am considered untrustworthy with a key to my office here. That is scandalous. We should have 24 hour, seven days a week access to our offices. In other words, things should be made easy. Investment in such resources would assist us in making the kind of contribution so many others have made in this House over the years without assistance. I would be happy to defend such expenditure. I would not be abashed to say we should get more money and resources and that we would do a better job if we were only given the facilities and the capacity. As an Independent, I can say that without the danger of a public revolt of voters and in any case I do not care. My voters voted me in because they know I will say precisely what is on my mind. If they do not like it that is a problem which I am not capable of resolving.

Mr. Farrell

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Seanad Éireann" and substitute the following:

"welcomes the commitment of the Government set out, in the ‘broadening our democracy' section of the Programme for a Partnership Government to enhancing the role of the Houses of the Oireachtas in the formulation and oversight of public policy; and commends the steps already taken to improve the facilities available to members to enable them to perform their functions more effectively."

A Chathaoirligh, i dtús báire, ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an t-Aire don Teach. It gives me great pleasure to propose this amendment. When I came here first in 1982 there were eight of us in one room with one telephone line between us. Today each Member has a telephone line and an office, or at most two share an office. In 1982 we had a number of secretaries in one room and none of us knew who our secretary was because we had a typing pool system which was grossly inadequate. Today everybody has their own secretary, or a secretary works for two Senators. Marvellous improvements have been made in providing services over the few years I have been in this House. I have no doubt that in the years ahead and in the life of this Government facilities will be improved. The Programme for a Partnership Government spells out that facilities will be improved and they are improving at a very fast rate.

It always amuses me that professors and people of that nature never seem to agree among themselves. Even on the motion the proposer and seconder could not agree. It is one of the weaknesses of academics that they always contradict one another whether the discussion is on health boards or engineers. Whatever the subject, the same applies, even on this simple motion. The proposer and seconder do not agree among themselves on exactly what they want. At times Senator Norris could have been speaking to the amendment rather than to the motion.

I was amazed to hear the Senator talk about training. Those who came in through local authorities know there is a seminar for new local authority members in almost every county. Any county that does not run that seminar could do so if it chose because it is available. It is very valuable. Some speakers are councillors with 20 or 25 years experience and there are also some professional speakers. It is hard to beat practical experience coming from people who are in there doing the digging. They know what the field is like to till.

I do not entirely agree when Senator Norris says that he should have the key to his office 24 hours a day seven days a week. This is our national Parliament and it is a high security area. It would cost a large amount of money to maintain security if people were allowed to come and go. Members might bring in somebody to help them and this would be a security risk. Anyone who works here all day from the time the office opens in the morning until the House closes at night has a pretty long day and can do a lot of work.

I find the Library very efficient. The staff are very courteous and helpful. If I do not know exactly what I am looking for but I have a general idea they can dig through the files and come up with exactly what I want. I find the Library staff very helpful.

Research is a very broad term. Our job here is to use our own practical experience. Experience is very important. We are doing research every day because we are talking to the people on the ground. We are getting their views, we know where the shoe is pinching and we know whom we are representing.

This country is damned with statistics and figures. Senator Norris said that much that comes into our office is rubbish. It is all formulated by somebody and it represents time wasted because I do not know any Senator who reads all he receives. I have no doubt that the simplest document takes hours of preparation. Much time and energy is spent producing that piece of information and it is like a lighthouse in a bog, well presented but useless. It has no meaning in the context of the work we are doing. Any information needed by a Senator can be found by ringing Eolas, FÁS, or the relevant agency. If information is needed on the EC Senators have only to make contact with the EC office on Molesworth Street, and all the information needed, down to the finest detail, can be found. I only do research applicable to what will be debated in the Seanad or a topic on which I want to make my views known, or to speak with a Minister or information applicable to a matter which will be discussed at a parliamentary party meeting. Senators can go to the relevant agencies and will get the information if they know exactly what they want and ask for it in a quiet and precise manner. As far as research of that kind is concerned, we have lots of it.

Senator Lee talked about engineers. I agree with Senator Norris that engineers are losing out. They are no longer involved in planning, and that is a great mistake. Someone with a degree in world affairs can do a diploma in planning and become a planning officer, while an engineer who has done all the work needed for planning is no longer a planner. The engineers have let that slip through their fingers. They were the planners and I always found it easy to deal with engineers because they are practical people, many of them. All of them at some time or other went out and worked on buildings and did practical work. They were down to earth and one could talk sense to them. It was a mistake that they lost the planning function. They are slipping up, they should keep their eye on the ball and not let other academics step into the jobs they should be doing. Professor Lee might think on that point.

I congratulate the Government on the good job they are doing. The service we have in this House has improved greatly in the few years since I came here in 1982, and it is improving all the time. At the end of this Government's term of office our services will be much better. The committee system has created more openness and a better opportunity for people to debate their case more fully than they might in the Dáil or Seanad.

I congratulate the Minister on the work she is doing. I believe that when we come to the end of this term we will have proceeded far along the road to better services. Of course services cost money, and we should remember that only 1.2 million people are working and 2.4 million people are being paid by that 1.2 million. We talk about more service, more research and more money but we must think of who pays the bill. It is frightening to think that 2.4 million people are living off 1.2 million who are working. We must keep our advancements and improvements in proportion to what we can afford. In that way we will get value for money. Things have improved considerably and will continue to improve. I hope that the amendment will be accepted.

Mr. Howard

I support the motion and compliment the proposer and seconder on the thorough arguments in support of it. Having listened to Senator Farrell, I agree with his description of the deplorable facilities that existed here in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Conditions have improved somewhat but the reality is that in today's circumstances they are quite inadequate. The motion reads:

That Seanad Eireann deplores the lack of research facilities necessary to enable the Oireachtas discharge its responsibilities effectively; and calls on the Government to make a specific budgetary allocation for the resources required to permit the Oireachtas play its proper role in policy making.

I support that and I am disappointed that there is a Government amendment rejecting it and stating that the Government has a policy of "enhancing the role of the Houses of the Oireachtas in the formulation and oversight of public policy;..."

That suggestion is a sham if this motion is rejected. I find the motion reasonable and positive. It is a simple request for facilities that are necessary for the Oireachtas to properly discharge its functions. It is a recognition that without adequate research facilities we, as legislators, are handicapped in discharging our duties in this Assembly. The level of research facilities available to us compared to other parliaments is deplorable. Senator Norris referred to facilities in Australia but one does not have to go as far as Australia, or very far from home, to realise how inadequate the facilities available to us are in comparison to neighbouring parliaments.

Despite the improvements to which Senator Farrell referred, we still work in overcrowded conditions and are supplied with minimum secretarial service. Part of the problem is that over the years we willingly short-changed our position and our standing where work facilities were concerned. We were content to accept inadequate standards and there was a tendency, that has certain reverberations here this evening, to accept that what we had was adequate. I deplore that.

We are often ill-equipped because of a lack of research facilities to fully debate legislation and other issues. The legal process is inadequate, poorer and less effective because of the absence of these facilities. There is a growing cynicism among the public about the capacity of politicians to fulfil their role and that in itself is dangerous for democracy.

Senator Lee mentioned that the reality is that we, on this side of the House, are far too dependent on briefings supplied to us by interested parties to legislation that comes before the House and that a good deal of that information can be partisan. We do not have the facilities to test the balance of the information supplied to us.

I want to give an example how the lack of facilities affect a matter I raised on the Order of Business today. It concerns papers being laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. On the Order Paper of 12 October 1993 a total of 175 documents were laid before the House; 104 were statutory instruments, 48 were non-statutory and 23 came from the European Parliament. Among them was a document containing a total of 81 pages that will, in its present form, have far-reaching implications for the livestock industry. I happened by chance to notice that document on the list of papers laid before the House and went to the Library to find a copy. I was astonished by what I saw in it. There are a total of 174 other documents there that in various ways will affect people's lives adversely or beneficially. Since I do not have the time to study the detail of each document I am not effectively representing the people I should. If I had the necessary facilities it would be possible to examine these documents.

There is a provision that 21 sitting days must elapse before such regulations come into effect. Many of the regulations that have come into effect, often because notice has not been taken of them, lead to endless problems for many people. Regularly in this House we give power to Ministers to introduce legislation over a period by regulation and order. These ministerial orders are rarely examined when enacted, however, because of the absence of facilities that this motion seeks to provide.

I am disappointed with the amendment. It represents a rejection of a reasonable and necessary request. More than that, it represents one of the worst aspects of the political system, which is a denial by the Government that inefficiency exists when it is plain to everybody that it does. One might suspect some sort of vested interest by the Government in restricting the well of knowledge that should be available to Senators. The amendment proposes that the Seanad should welcome the Government's refusal to provide necessary facilities. In my view, the Seanad should do no such thing but should, as the motion requests, deplore in the strongest possible manner the denial of facilities that are freely available to members of other parliaments.

For any parliamentarian to suggest that this reasonable motion should be rejected, is an act of irresponsibility. I will be supporting the motion.

Ms Kelly

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will be supporting the amendment, not because I find everything Senator Lee, Senator Norris and Senator Howard have said is rubbish but because we must be realistic and acknowledge that with 300,000 people unemployed the public would not tolerate any proposal by us to improve our conditions. The public already regard us as rather pampered individuals. Although I risk being termed a gutless politician by Senator Norris, I believe greater research facilities, better conditions of pay, nicer offices, en suite facilities and so on would be the ideal, but we must realise that there are greater priorities and we must therefore wait our turn.

I must agree that many of us enter this Chamber unprepared for the task that lies ahead of us. Whether we should regard this as the fault of the Government or our own fault is debatable. Before an individual goes in front of the people as a candidate for election he or she should engage in soul searching and ask whether he or she is fully equipped for the job being sought.

The number of Senators and Deputies with any form of legal training of any kind is minimal. It is not a standard that others can impose on Senators and Deputies but it is a standard that we as public representatives should impose upon ourselves. We should equip ourselves better for the role we undertake. We should not expect others to do that for us. If we want better research facilities, we should endeavour to become better researchers ourselves. It is not beyond the intelligence and capability of any Member of this House to help themselves a little more in finding and collating information. I have done all the research for my contributions to this House. In the process I am learning. Not having to rely on others to research information on my behalf makes me question and verify the information presented to me.

It is difficult, with the vast array of subjects and topics that come before us, to be fully informed on all matters. As other Senators have pointed out, a vast amount of reports and documents are sent to us every second day. Some are well worth reading. In travelling from west Limerick I engage in a large amount of reading and it is quite easy to spot whether a document submitted for consideration is partisan. I would not like to see any reduction in the amount of information submitted to us. The booklet Poverty Today produced by the Combat Poverty Agency and many other documents produced by that agency are excellent and well researched, most of the articles being written by reputable academics who, I am sure, would be recognised by Senator Lee and Senator Norris. We can rely on those with academic qualifications to have researched their topic. As academics we can rely on their integrity to present the facts as they perceive them and not to falsify them.

We live in an age where the politician is not viewed favourably by the public. In many ways we are seen as parasites on society. This worries me, especially when attending public meetings and finding that politicians are criticised and that such criticisms are directed at oneself. In my case I am aware that such criticisms would not have been made three years ago when I was not an elected politician. When I express an interest in attending a meeting, at which I might have been welcome three years ago, I find that I am now no longer welcome. In one case I was told that unless I was representing a specific group I could not attend. I find that kind of attitude developing more and more. It is something we must be worried about. It is not helped by sections in the media highlighting our weaknesses. As human beings we have weaknesses. For example, we are inclined on occasion to help those who help us, which is a natural inclination, but it is not something a politician will do all the time. However, the portrayal of the politician as someone who is lazy, giving out backhanders and helping their cronies is becoming increasingly prevalent. Very often it is completely contrary to the role played by politicians. We have at heart the best interests of our communities, our regions, our towns and our villages, yet that is not recognised.

I do not believe that this is the time for us to ask for more money, nicer offices and better research facilities. I would agree that in many ways it would be nice to have someone do the leg work, for example, to tell someone to phone around to confirm facts. However, I believe that many of us are poor enough to be our own servants.

Mr. Sherlock

I support the amendment and I have made a great effort to attend this debate. We must accept that these are changing times. Procedures, documentation and legislation is changing. The position is not as simple as portrayed by Senators on the Government side of the House. It is important to keep to the forefront the significance of Seanad Éireann and we must continue to strive for the facilities requested in the motion. If we seek to improve facilities, it is for the purpose of providing a better public service.

When elected to this House I said that I had been a public representative at local level since 1967 and for a short time at national level and that I had quite a lot to learn. Indeed, I am learning in this House but I notice that there are such restrictions and limitations that there is need for improvement. That is the importance of the motion. The motion states that Seanad Éireann deplores the lack of research facilities necessary to enable the Oireachtas discharge its responsibilities effectively. Who could object to and oppose that? If the Seanad is part of the Oireachtas who could say, in all fairness, say that it is not right that there should be resources for research facilities? A specific budgetary allocation is the only way by which these facilities can be provided. Such an allocation is logical and reasonable and is being requested in this motion which I support wholeheartedly. I cannot understand why anybody would oppose that.

The Seanad has been the subject of much criticism over the last few years. Much of it has been misdirected but this does not mean that there is not an urgent need for this House and the Oireachtas generally to update its procedures, to facilitate Members who want to make constructive contributions to the work of the House and to enable it to respond rapidly to important political issues as they arise. This would show the people that the Oireachtas can be relevant to their lives. That is what we are seeking to do in supporting this motion.

The amendment to the motion welcomes the commitment of the Government set out in the "Broadening our democracy" section of the Programme for a Partnership Government. I do not think that programme specifically contains provisions for the Seanad to be updated. If it does, I would like the Minister to clarify them. There was a two day debate in the Dáil on the reform of that House. I hope there will also be a debate in this House for the purpose of reforming and updating the Seanad and the provision of facilities.

The relevance of the Seanad is determined largely by the extent of the real role allowed it by the Government, who may use it merely as a rubber stamp for legislation already processed in the Dáil. The Seanad will be seen to have little relevance unless it is given a more meaningful legislative role. More legislation should be initiated in the Seanad, as is permitted by the Constitution. It should be allowed to examine legislation seriously and Ministers should be prepared to listen to what is said. I hope the Seanad will undertake at the earliest opportunity a similar reform programme to that undertaken in the Dáil. The introduction of a form of Question Time and the ability to raise matters on the Adjournment have been talked about and would be valuable.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this motion. The unique nature of the Seanad electoral system enables debates to take place on a more rational basis than in the politically confrontational atmosphere of the Dáil. The Seanad is especially suited to dealing with legislation that is complex and detailed and requires close examination. For that reason this motion is valid and relevant and I support it.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Ms E. Fitzgerald)

I have a great deal of sympathy with the sentiments behind the substantive motion put forward by Senator Lee and Senator Norris. It reflects a desire on the part of this House to contribute more effectively to the formation of public policy. I have some quarrel with the tone of the motion but it is very healthy and good that we are having this debate and the standard of the contributions on all sides has been high. I welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues because reforming the institutions of Government is central to the Programme for a Partnership Government. I was very pleased to be assigned, with the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Dempsey, responsibility for the section of this programme entitled-"Broadening our democracy." I will discuss this in more detail in my contribution.

Many practical points were raised in the course of the contributions. Some of these can be addressed but we must recognise that there are budgetary constraints and there are not limitless resources to devote to our own affairs. However, many practical points were raised and there is room for improvement. We can move together on that. The Government has put a great deal of effort into Oireachtas reform and has, intrinsically, concentrated in the first phase on reform of the Dáil. There has been a radical reform of that institution. It is timely that we look again at reform of procedures in the Seanad. The issues raised by Senator Sherlock of Question Time and Adjournment matters are important.

A question was raised about training in relation to legislation and its drafting. This could be undertaken without sending people from this House to do law degrees. An introduction to legal procedures and language would be helpful and can be explored. There are technical problems in relation to providing a data base for people in that the computers are stand alone rather than networked. There are technical and cost implications of putting a data base on a network system but, in principle, it can be explored. Many of these issues should be raised with the Committee on Procedure and Privileges and further explored. Members will find an openness, subject to prudence on cost, to look at the issues they have raised.

I understand the sentiments behind the motion. Indeed, Senator Lee's magnum opus speaks with passion of the need to improve the quality of public decision making. That is very much the reason that the Government is very committed to broadening our democracy and we should do it together through this kind of discussion which, I hope, will not be adversarial but one in which we will listen to each other and discuss the practical issues that arise in pursuing these problems.

Members of the Oireachtas have a lawmaking responsibility. They also have a responsibility to review Government policy and executive actions. Sometimes people may concentrate too much on their role as legislators without seeing that there are whole areas of public policy which are not covered by legislation. For example, until now there has been little legislation in relation to education. This does not mean that a huge amount of policy making does not take place in that area. The role of Members of the Oireachtas involves investigating the Government's policies, proposing alternative courses of action and an ongoing critique of the Government's performance. The Oireachtas brings important issues to the attention of the public and provides a valuable feedback to the Government. The role of both Government and Opposition is important in a healthy democracy.

Public representatives also act as a bridge between the general public and the institutions of Government. They can bring to light how policies work in practice. They can highlight anomalies and help ensure the system delivers for the public it is intended to serve. This role is valuable. Both these approaches have a part to play in the democratic process. There has been criticism that too often the latter role of being a bridge between the public and institutions has dominated to the extent that the former role of scrutinising policy and legislation has been underplayed. It is important that the Members of the Seanad are willing and interested in being more involved in this area.

The imbalance in our democratic system carries with it two serious implications. First, we have been underutilising the extensive talents and experience of Members of the Oireachtas. The point was well made by Senator Farrell that experience, as well as formal qualifications, is very important. We have been wasting a valuable public resource and this is no longer acceptable. We need to bring the minds of everybody elected to both Houses to bear on the making of public policy.

As has been pointed out, the complexity of public administration has intensified at a remarkable rate. This raises issues of reforming the way the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Government are run and reforming the public service. This is a cornerstone of the Programme for a Partnership Government in the section "Broadening our democracy". Significant progress has already been made but is only the start of a process.

I have great respect for the democratic process. As somebody who stood for election five times before getting here, I have great respect for the will of the people. Those elected by the people, or indirectly as many in this House are by the people's representatives, must be given a real voice in the shaping and scrutiny of policy and not be seen just as lobby fodder. The new committee system offers scope for detailed scrutiny of policy issues, Estimates and legislation in a calmer atmosphere and with more time than the often set piece debates which often add more heat than light. I particularly welcome my opportunities to come to this House and the more reflective and less adversarial atmosphere it offers for public debate.

Mr. Manning

The Minister should have been here this morning.

Ms E. Fitzgerald

The demands on Ministers and Ministers of State have grown. In the past, Ministers were a group of full-time politicians serviced by their civil servants. They were expected to be absolute repositories of all knowledge and wisdom in the areas covered by their briefs, with the doctrine of corporation sole making Ministers legally answerable for the acts of every civil servant in their Department, from the lowest to the highest. Ministers can no longer carry this burden on their own and we must be humble enough to acknowledge this. We need to share the load with other non-office holding Members of the Oireachtas. They have much to contribute and we who are office holders must be prepared to seek and accept their assistance.

A further major implication of the democratic imbalance has been that we have been selling the average citizen short to the extent that public representatives have been overly concentrating on local and particular issues, often to the detriment of the broader policy considerations which, paradoxically, could often have much greater relevance for their constituents in the longer run. I have always had a philosophy that when dealing with individual cases and constituency work, it is essential to look behind the point the individual raises to see the policy issue, and if one runs up against a brick wall to see if we can change the underlying policy.

From my experience — and I have worked as a civil servant, briefly as a ministerial economic adviser in 1982 and now as a Minister — I believe that the temporary importation of outside expertise by Ministers to assist them in their departmental and Cabinet work is an important and necessary addition to Irish administrative structures. Within Departments, an outside expert can bring new insights and often a breath of fresh air and encourage new thinking within the Civil Service system. In terms of Ministers' collective responsibility at Cabinet, there is rarely available within the traditional structures the kind of advice a Minister needs to deal with the complexities of other Minister's briefs on top of their own. It is intended to give statutory effect to the long-standing practice that appointments of outside experts to help with this complex work will terminate at the end of the term of office of the Minister who appoints them.

The single most important reform which we have implemented to date is the establishment of the new committee system, which represents a sea change in our system of public representation. The committees draw upon the talents of a large number of Deputies — and in the case of joint committees, of Members of both Houses — who are being given an opportunity to discuss in detail legislation relating to groups of Government Departments, as well as the Estimates for those Departments. I see these committees promoting progress towards deepening our democracy in a number of ways.

First, they are removing many issues from the sterile point-scoring and headline-grabbing which is often a substitution for genuine discourse and teasing out of legislation. They are operating in a forum where there is a real sense of co-operation and pooling of resources and cross-party team spirit is already beginning to emerge. Senator Norris gave examples earlier of amendments which had come through this House. We have seen Opposition amendments coming through the committee system and being heard on the Government side. That gives people on both sides of the House a real input into what is happening.

Second, the committees are making space for meaningful participation from a wider range of Deputies than was ever possible under previous arrangements, where traditionally only the spokes-person from each party dealt with the Committee Stage of Bills. There is now a much wider input from a greater number of Deputies. Deputies are briefing themselves more thoroughly and making more effective contributions than was either necessary or feasible when these matters were considered at full sittings of the Dáil. The assignment of the Dáil Committee Stage work on Bills to the appropriate committees gives Deputies an increased incentive to develop an in-depth expertise on particular areas of public administration and policy making. It also gives more time to go through legislation.

I can sympathise with those who feel that the traditional balance between the Executive and backbenchers of all parties has resulted in provisions finding their way onto the Statute Book without being adequately teased out. It can also be argued that particularly where abstruse technical details affected the fortune of the privileged — and this would be particularly true of Finance Bills — the privileged could purchase organised professional expertise which could have an influence greater than Members of the Oireachtas. That is fundamentally antidemocratic. I think the point was well made in the discussion that the briefing which Members of both Houses get is often from specialist interest groups with an axe to grind and, therefore, it may not be the full picture. I agree with the point Senator Lee made about the need to subject thinking to independent scrutiny and to challenge the assumptions behind traditional policies, which was my motivation for entering politics.

The Government has embarked on a most ambitious programme of reform. We have only just started and I think we need to move further, particularly in relation to the Seanad. Our concern is to ensure that the programme delivers the promised benefits. In bringing specific reform measures before the Oireachtas we will not claim that the fine detail of what we propose is incapable of improvement. It is important to have a vibrant contribution from all sides of the House if optimum progress is to be made and I see the new arrangements for discussing legislation as facilitating this process. It is important that the process of Oireachtas reform is carried out in as consultative a manner as possible.

I have often remarked in the past how the Estimates went through on the nod with limited scrutiny — huge sums of public money, often much more important than actual legislation. It is a positive move that these are now scrutinised by the committees. Such scrutiny of the Estimates is a development of the utmost significance for parliamentary power. Another area where I think parliamentary accountability and involvement has been improved is a Bill which I brought through this and the other House — the Comptroller and Auditor General Bill. It puts an emphasis on value for money audit and beefs up the role of the Committee of Public Accounts, which strengthens the role of the democratic process in overseeing the actions of the Executive.

A priority item on the Government's agenda is the issue of privilege and compellability of witnesses appearing before Oireachtas committees and of documents sought by committees. The Government is anxious to ensure that the potential of all Oireachtas committees is fully realised. Some committees have expressed the view that they have been hampered in the effective discharge of their responsibilities because witnesses did not enjoy absolute privilege for statements which they might make and for documents which they might furnish and because there is even a question mark over the qualified privilege which witnesses enjoy if the media are present. Equally, the view has been expressed by a number of committees that they should have legal support to reinforce their right to call for the attendance of witnesses and the provision of papers.

The issues thrown up by these subjects are complex and involve striking a fine balance between on the one hand the necessity to strengthen the committee system and on the other the necessity to protect the confidentiality of certain categories of sensitive data, including confidential personal information, from public disclosure. The process of consideration is nearing completion and it is our intention to have proposals in this area before the Oireachtas as a matter of urgency. The Government is quite clear in the principle and we are ironing our the legal details. I am examining proposals for a freedom of information Bill in the light of best practice and experience of such legislation in other jurisdictions. I would welcome any views this House has to offer at this preparatory stage before we crystallise finally the shape of the proposals.

Our democracy is only as strong as the confidence which our citizens place in its institutions. The Ethics in Public Office Bill, which should be published before Christmas and which I hope will receive careful scrutiny in this House, will help strengthen public confidence in our democratic institutions. Based on the principles of transparency and accountability, it will offer public accountability in areas where private business interests could be seen as likely to overlap with public functions. I feel that many of our citizens have on occasion withheld placing their full confidence in democratic institutions because they saw them as somewhat irrelevant to their needs and less than effective in carrying out the tasks assigned to them. We have a responsibility to ensure that we adapt and change our structures and procedures to make them relevant, meaningful and effective.

I am aware that Members may be impatient for change and improvement. So am I. Those of us who are recent entrants to these Houses, particularly those of us who took a long time to get here, share that impatience but we think it is vital to ensure that what we do is done right and that it should stand the test of time.

We do not rush into something halfcocked. Our intentions are clear and we are on our way to fulfilling them. Translating those which require legislation into statute is time consuming and painstaking. I have discovered that myself while preparing legislation. It takes a lot of time and one must cover all the angles. It is easy to produce a Private Members' Bill in Opposition, but it is more difficult to produce something which will be put into legislation because it must be correct in all its details and stand the test of time. On the issue of Private Members' legislation, there is a commitment in the Programme for a Partnership Government, and we will bring forward proposals in the near future to allow for the introduction of Private Members' legislation in the case of non-contentious issues. The specific proposals in that regard are almost complete.

It is easy to call on the Government to provide additional resources on the grounds that additional funding, additional staffing, or improved access to consultants can enhance the capacity of Members to contribute to the public wellbeing. This feeling has been evident throughout the debate. Members will realise that this Government had a short run into this year's budget and we will look again at the issues in the context of next year's budget. The process of settling Estimates for the Public Services, including the Houses of the Oireachtas, is already in train and such views as are expressed here tonight will have a bearing on the outcome. They will be examined and taken seriously.

The forthcoming electoral Bill will deal with the resourcing of political parties and the case being made by the Independent Senators for backup funding and research can be examined in that context. At the moment there is a system of funding Opposition parties to provide backup research facilities. This will be incorporated in a wider scheme of political funding in the electoral Bill. The points being made in terms of research expertise, particularly for groups not represented in the mainstream political parties, should be considered in that context.

I would also like to draw the attention of the House to the resource offered by the Library and its trained staff in helping Members research contributions, and the further development of this resource could be usefully pursued. The National Library is also in this complex and it is a resource we need to use.

Mr. Manning

It is closed for the month of November.

Ms E. Fitzgerald

I realise that but there are areas where we can explore the joint development of the two facilities. Deputy J. Bruton has raised the issue of the Committee on Procedure and Privileges examining the Library and research services. It is in this type of atmosphere that practical proposals can be brought forward in that area. I recognise the need to strengthen the use of that resource.

I must strike a note of caution about one point. I understand and sympathise with the demand for professional backup and research facilities for Members. However, should research facilities be provided through a formal office structure involving permanent Civil Service staff or should they be obtained by Members and their parties through the electoral Bill mechanism for funding? A corps of professional researchers, whether salaried or drawn from the consultancy professions, may bring additional insights to bear on the problems of making or overseeing public policy. However, is there a danger that Members might draw on a restricted pool of ideas through such consultants? Most of us are conscious, particularly those who read the Sunday Independent, that research is not value free. One may get different answers depending on who one asks to research a particular topic.

Our politico-administrative system may not be the best participatory democracy, but it has one fundamental strength in the ready accessibility of its elected Members to the public. This interplay between the public and their representatives furnishes our politicians with a rich reservoir of ideas and experience which cannot be matched by any bought in expertise. We are close to the people. The diverse vocational backgrounds in this House was the idea of the author of the Seanad and there should be that kind of broad experience in this House.

Senator Lee referred to the third strand, the voluntary sector. I am pleased to say it is incorporated in the new National Economic and Social Forum which is part of the process of broadening our democracy. For the first time, representatives of the unemployed, the disabled, women's groups and disadvantaged communities as well as Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas are involved in scrutinising and debating public policy in a central forum. When setting up the forum, I was anxious to ensure representation from all sides, including the Independent Senators and all parties represented in both Houses. Although the numbers are great, it enriches participation in this area.

The question was raised about resourcing the third strand to participate. We need to be careful because we do not want to resource a poverty or consultancy profession instead of individuals and groups. That would be counter-productive. People need to speak to us from their personal experience and that voice must always be mediated through the voices of professionals. We lose something important and immediate about the contribution people make if others speak for them. I sound this note of caution in relation to resourcing a third strand to make their contribution: the independent secretariat of the National Economic and Social Forum is open to all, including members of the third strand and the first strand, which is the Houses of the Oireachtas.

A former and distinguished Member of this House, Mr. W.B. Yeats, in what was his only piece published under the auspices of the Department of Finance, headed his report of an advisory committee's activities with, "What We Did And What We Tried To Do". A lot of what I have mentioned at this stage of the Government's life falls into the category of "what we are doing", but I can still point with some degree of pride to important items in the "what we did" category of reforms in broadening our democracy.

I hope we can make progress through consultation on the issues before the House. Broadening our democracy and improving the quality of public decision making and the input of the elected Members of both Houses into the public policy making process is a central part of the Government's programme. Many important and useful points were made in the debate. Senator Lee, Senator Roche and I are former officials of the Department of Finance and we know the useful caveat, "subject to the availability of the public finances".

Mr. Manning

I compliment Senator Lee and the Independent Members for tabling this motion. It is one which is of interest to Members on all sides. I cannot understand why the Government side thought it was necessary to table an amendment. They have, perhaps unwittingly, made this debate slightly divisive, but it should not be as we all have the same interests in this issue. I compliment the Minister of State on her discursive speech which moved at times into the parliamentary stratosphere, but touched too infrequently on the real needs of the Seanad. It was an interesting speech, but perhaps more relevant to the other House and I will explain why in a moment. Nevertheless, I agree with many of the sentiments expressed by her.

The research needs of any House of Parliament or Member will vary greatly and they are difficult to quantify. Since we do not have any research facilities in this House, therefore it is not a question of quantifying what they are. If we compare ourselves with what is available in other parliaments, the resources are shamefully inadequate. I agree with the Minister that there are different types of research and values. Perhaps professional Civil Service research is not what we need; perhaps research should come from outside and this would create a different perspective. We should be able to organise this ourselves. It is strange that this is difficult to achieve at a time when there are many highly qualified post-graduates who would love an opportunity to do research in a parliamentary setting. There is no structure available where the resources provided by these skilled people can be used to benefit us and at the same time give them a training which would make it easier for them to get jobs afterwards. We could talk forever about structures but unless the resources are put in place, we will be a long time waiting for something to happen.

The Minister spent much time talking about committees. I agree that the new committee system looks like being successful but I have two reservations. I think it is perhaps over diminishing the adversarial nature of politics. We are becoming too consensus oriented. One can go to the Minister's forum or the education forum, there are committees everywhere and, to a certain extent, some of the necessary cut and thrust of politics is disappearing.

My main complaint about committees is that this House is excluded from three of the four committees. That is not the Minister's responsibility but Members of this House feel very strongly that there is no committee structure within which they can operate. For that reason much of what the Minister said this evening about committees was not particularly relevant to this House.

I must take strong exception to the Minister's reference to the Library. Although the Minister quoted my own party leader when saying that the Committee on Procedure and Privileges has responsibility for the Library, it is not the responsibility of Committee on Procedure and Privileges; it is the responsibility of the Joint Services Committee. The Minister, in one short paragraph, skated over that issue.

The position in the Oireachtas Library is nothing short of scandalous. The quality of the service provided is dependent on the staff and financial resources available. The staff numbers are lower now than they were ten years ago in spite of the ever increasing demand for a greater service. The requirements on the staff have become more sophisticated and the staff, hard working people who are dedicated to the Library, are simply not in a position to provide that service.

The parliamentary libraries which offer research services are generally structured to provide for two separate units: a library unit staffed by professional librarians and a research unit staffed by graduates with specialisation in various disciplines with back up support usually provided by lower grades. This is not the case in our Library. The same staff are responsible for the Library service which involves such tasks as cataloguing, indexing and circulation control as well as the operation of the research service.

None of the staff here are professional librarians. The day to day needs of getting information and running the Library takes precedence over any sort of research services. While an essential requirement for the grade of assistant librarian is an honours degree with subject specialisation, a qualification in librarianship is not necessary for employment in the Library here. The process of cataloguing, indexing and maintaining a library collection, which requires professional skills, has not been maintained here.

I do not know how many Members have visited the underground part of this building. In 1922, the chief secretary's library, or large parts of it, were transferred from Dublin Castle to this building. Most of that collection lies under this building at present and most of it has not been catalogued because the professional staff was never there to do it. Many of the books are deteriorating; they are covered in dust and will be lost if something is not done soon.

These books should not be here. The Oireachtas Library is not the place for a collection of books which may be of great scholarly interest. The sooner something is done about having them catalogued and put where they can be used by bona fide scholars, the better. That is one part of a valuable resource that simply has not been catalogued. The lack of proper professionalism or numbers means that the necessary skills for a library are not available and because staff resources are so inadequate, a large proportion of the material in the Library has never been catalogued.

The forthcoming automation of the Library holding also underlines the need for professional skills. Computerisation is a complex task which needs expertise within the unit. That expertise sadly is not there at present.

The function of the research service was established in 1976. The service has now become increasingly limited in most areas and it is impossible to find time for staff to draw up comprehensive memoranda to carry out in-depth research. The quality of the research undertaken is hampered by the poor quality of retrieval tools, catalogues and indexes and by the fact that there is not a bank of current information to draw on as was the case in the early years of the service when newspapers and periodicals were scanned and indexed on a regular basis.

The Library's budget for 1993 is £40,000 and that is to cover expenditure on books, periodicals, newspapers and so on. That budget figure has not changed over the past three years; the budget increase for the Library in recent years has been totally unrealistic. It increased from £35,000 in 1986 to £40,000 last year whereas in the years 1981 to 1986 it increased from £12,000 to £35,000, a threefold increase. No account is taken in this budget of the constantly increasing cost of publications, newspapers and so on.

If we are to start where Senator Lee wants, in providing a research service, we should look in our Library. Without going into all sorts of discussion about the many worthwhile things about which the Minister spoke this evening, if that one paragraph on the Library had been amplified, we could make a real beginning in providing research services.

I should have declared an interest at the beginning of this discussion which would be in line with the Minister's new Ethics Bill as we will now all be obliged to declare our particular interests. I am chairman of a subcommittee of the Joint Services Committee which has responsibility for the Library. In the coming weeks and months we will be talking extensively to Members asking them what sort of service they require. We will be seeking to put the Library on a fully professional footing but we cannot do that unless this becomes a priority. A realistic budget must be presented to facilitate the recruitment of staff and allow the Library to bring in people, whether on a training scheme or from the various archive departments, to catalogue the collections underneath this building.

In talking about research and reform of this area, I make a plea from the heart for understanding from the Minister and from the Government of the needs of the Library. It is in the Library that reform will start and that the needs of Members can begin to be adequately addressed. It is a scandal that the Library has been ignored for so long. There has been nobody to speak on behalf of the Library; people from various parties have not come together to make the case. The people there have worked very hard in bad conditions. They want to have a proper professional parliamentary library and so do we, but we are the people who can put the pressure on the Minister and the Minister is the person who can deliver.

Mr. Roche

This has been a very worthwhile debate and I commend the movers of the motion because it has given us an opportunity to focus on important aspects of the life of this House and the other House and the way the two Houses operate. I commend the Minister on an extremely provocative speech, as indeed many of the other speeches were.

Like Senator Manning, I believe that the reform should start in the Library. It is a resource which is much under utilised. The Library is the proper focus for the research facility. I would not agree with the idea that there should be a fund with which we would hire researchers because it could be subject to abuse.

There are many things wrong with both Houses of the Oireachtas and we should admit it. This debate is excellent in that it provides us with a facility to say that. Lack of research is just one of the many things wrong with both Houses. We all accept, understand and admit that there are serious constraints in the way both Houses perform their constitutional task.

There is poor funding for both Houses of the Oireachtas. It is bizarre and extraordinary that the Houses have to go to the Department of Finance to seek a budget. After all, the Houses of the Oireachtas are supposed to be in charge. Constitutionally, the Dáil is charged with the task of guardianship of the public purse, yet when either the Dáil or the Seanad want a shilling to do anything in the interests of the public and the public good, they have to go to the Department of Finance. It is even more bizarre that the two Houses accept when the Department refuses. Could anything be more the inverse of how it should be?

The Minister, correctly, looked at what is being done in the committee system. However, I do not believe our committee system can work or produce anything worthwhile. It will collapse in the same way as the one introduced by a previous Coalition Government some years ago because the ultimate focus of Members of both Houses is being re-elected.

Our electoral system is not conducive to politicians operating as legislators. It produces a system where we operate by the law of the jungle which, in turn, produces a type of well equipped gombeenmanism. Research facilities will not change that. Changing the electoral system will release Members of both Houses from those shackles and provide them with the capacity to fulfil their constitutional responsibilities. The Minister and other Members know that I have written extensively on the issue of clientelism and how we serve constituents. It is a very valuable role but when one finds through research, as I did in the early 1980s, that 83 to 85 per cent of Members' time is spent servicing constituency work, one must ask if anything would change if we had phalanxes of research officers or if we had a library equivalent to the Library of Congress. The truthful answer is no, it would not. If we are to reform how things are done in either or both Houses, it must be a root and branch reform.

I agree there is need for additional research facilities. I also agree with the comments made by Senator Manning. I have been to the basement and what I saw is a national scandal. There we have an extraordinary resource which dates from God knows how many years back and it is not available to Members, researchers or academics. It is a scandalous system. We could also look at how we could better do our job. We should look at the hours we work and at the fact that over the last two weeks we have not exactly been overburdened with legislative work. Even those truncated hours are produced by an electoral system which results in our politicians being relatively well paid gombeen men. We cannot fulfil our responsibility nor can we expect others in either House to fulfil that responsibility.

This was brought to my attention when I was chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on State Sponsored Bodies, a very prestigious committee and I regarded it a great honour to be not only a member of that committee but also its chairman. However, I remember Tuesdays when I and the clerk of that committee wandered both Houses like lost souls trying to beat in a quorum, and the quorum was only four. We must ask ourselves honestly will these reforms achieve a great deal.

I was amazed to find recently that the Oireachtas joint committee is looking at one aspect of State sponsored bodies. The Committee on Employment and Enterprise — which seems to be without a task — is fulfilling a role which clearly belongs to the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies by looking at the lottery and now the Public Accounts Committee is getting in on the same act. There is a clear need for us to decide the kind of committee system we should have. I believe we should have committees which focus on individual sectors of public administration: a committee on State enterprise, a committee on agriculture; sectoral committees to look at everything from the Estimates to the legislative proposals to the way the Minister and his or her Department operates.

We must also, and the Minister mentioned this, look at this myth of ministerial responsibility, although that is a job for another day. That a Minister could, should or does have knowledge of every action in his or her Department is clearly a nonsense and it is time to reform that. In 1969 the Devlin report made proposals to get rid of this. We have had honest attempts to reform both Houses of the Oireachtas. I believe we will never succeed until we have proper electoral reform.

Although this debate has been confined to relatively short contributions, it has been worthwhile because, if nothing else, it makes us look at ourselves and that is not a bad thing.

Dr. Henry

I welcome the Minister's speech. There are few people who value research more than she does having used it throughout her professional life. While I agree that we must remember budgetary restraints when seeking better facilities for research, I wonder if we are not also wasting a lot of money as a result of the lack of independent advice available to this House.

I try to confine my remarks to subjects about which I am knowledgeable and one subject is health and the finance we spend on health. It is extremely worrying that in this area, as in all others, we are heavily subject to pressures from interest groups. The main interest group in the health area is the consumer, our patients. However, we also have tremendous pressures at the other end from the interests of, for example, the pharmaceutical companies. These have more money than our consumer groups are ever likely to have, no matter how well we fund them.

An effort is being made in Europe to remove the secrecy surrounding the information released by pharmaceutical companies. Our Department of Health and National Drugs Advisory Board are both heavily dependent on information from the pharmaceutical companies and they, of course, apply commercial constraints to an enormous area of their information. In that context I am delighted to hear the Minister say that a freedom of information Act is to be introduced because it may remove some of the secrecy in this area.

I consider this issue to be serious because their advice may be costing us a lot of money. I will give one example of this. Anti-depressants are one of the main drugs prescribed under the GMS in this country. At the moment a new grouping of anti-depressant drugs is being promoted to replace the tricyclic group which has been in vogue for a long time. Their main advantage appears to be that it is more difficult to commit suicide with them. Of course, no one wants people committing suicide but they are 30 times as expensive as the old drugs. If the GMS prescribe them on a large scale, what will the cost be to the Department? No independent group has advised the Department or the National Drugs Advisory Board on what we should do.

I was also shocked to discover how hard it is to get in the Library independent reports published in this country. I am glad Members have complimented the Library staff because their ingenuity is incredible. I am not sure if they are borrowing books in bookshops in Dawson Street but they have come back to me with books they did not have when I requested them.

In this regard Trinity College Library has been incredibly good. However, a very important report, "Food Futures", was published earlier this year. It is a report on food consumption trends and prospects in Ireland and it is published by an independent campus company called Nutriscan in Trinity College. The research was carried out by our only futures research company, the Henley Centre. The report tells us about the change that has taken place in eating habits and in the foods that are bought in Ireland in the last ten years. In a food producing nation this must be important because apparently "meat and two veg." has gone out of fashion and take-away meals and ethnic foods are more important. In a few years we will all be eating lentils and yoghurt. We need this information.

I have been asking for the report for six months. I discovered that I had to wait because its price would have been an eightieth of the Library budget for the entire year. I know that is dear but one has to pay for expertise and in a country where agriculture and food industries are important we have to find out what we must produce for the consumer. There is no good in producing mountains of potatoes if apparently cauliflowers are in demand. We should have some guidance and the Department of Agriculture which receives strong lobbying from the farming interests should know what the consumer wants. We can, of course, rely on Senator Quinn to tell us but it would be nice if we had independent research such as this available to us. I did not realise that I was asking for an eightieth of the budget when I asked for the report.

Senator Lee and the Minister of State mentioned the research done by voluntary bodies. This is vital but are we depending too much on the voluntary bodies for our research? This morning I was on the social committee of the National Economic and Social Forum. We were discussing what we would describe as areas of deprivation. Given that the census is now seven years old and there has been a fair amount of demographic change and development since then, we had to give up in the end and bemoan the fact that we did not have the Combat Poverty report.

Ms E. Fitzgerald

It is based on the seven year old census.

Dr. Henry

Perhaps then it is as well that we did not have it. It was said earlier that all we had in the way of researchers were unpaid American students. I am glad to have them since they will often seek out information, but I tell them not say the information is for me.

Professor Lee

I have listened with great interest to what has been an instructive discussion both from a positive and from a negative point of view. There was virtually nothing, apart from the Library situation, that I would wish to disagree with in the Minister of State's speech. It was a positive, challenging and stimulating contribution. It left me all the more puzzled as to why there was an amendment put down in the first place which obliges me to push matters further than I would have otherwise.

With reference to the Library, what Senator Manning and Senator Roche said was absolutely right. The resources are minimal and they have not been improved for practical purposes since 1976 in terms of library staff. There may be one person less there now than in 1976. In terms of resourcing public bodies it must have the worst record of improvement over 16 or 17 years. The nub of the matter is that the Library is the part of the Minister of State's speech most relevant to my motion because it is specifically about research facilities. I am not at present concerned about office facilities or salaries or other matters which engaged my colleague, Senator Norris, to such an eloquent display of irrelevance. I am concerned with research facilities as such.

I accept that there is a public perception of politicians which the political class ought certainly to be thinking about. I put down this motion after a meeting in Dublin last Wednesday evening where public resentment against the perceived ineffectuality of the Oireachtas came through emphatically from a group of responsible citizens, not a group of natural protesters. I do not accept that the public would be agitated about the idea of spending, in the first instance, a small amount of money on research support.

I am not asking for the moon. I am not asking for research assistants for every individual. I am asking for some research assistants for the Houses of the Oireachtas and I have left it open as to how they could be most effectively supplied. This is a moderate demand on the grounds that 300,000 people are unemployed. It would create some work for some of the people Senator Manning was talking about. We have part-time American interns and we have no provision for Irish sources of support whether at that stage or later. I would argue strongly that we have 300,000 people unemployed at least partly because of misguided policies which might have been improved if the quality of Oireachtas thinking could have been improved in earlier years by the employment of people who could have been instrumental in supplying thinking which might have improved the quality of policy making.

I am not suggesting that professional politicians should be deprived of the pleasures of the political chase. I do not see why people should not derive quiet satisfaction from the pleasures of the stroke quietly pulled. That seems to be an integral part of our political culture and I would not wish seriously to change it. Members play an indispensable role in legitimising the activity of Government, but that activity could be significantly improved by some development in the direction I have mentioned.

I keep returning to the evaluation of the ideas that come in here. Virtually every idea in the Oireachtas comes in some way. As Members of the Oireachtas we are not generators of independent ideas, though we may be on the basis of experience we bring in from outside. I do not for a moment undervalue experience. I have listened with great interest and admiration to many contributions in this House from experienced Members. However, I have noticed that where the contribution from experience is most telling is in illuminating detail within the accepted general framework. It rarely questions the general framework of legislation. It brings knowledge of local circumstances to bear and often does so tellingly and interestingly, but it does not oblige Ministers fundamentally to rethink what they are proposing or the assumptions underlying their own policy proposals. Experience is, therefore, not a substitute for what I am talking about. For these reasons, the amendment does not adequately address the issues I have tried to raise.

With regard to the Minister of State's reference to the third strand, which I welcome, significant progress has been made there and I do not wish to decry that. I welcome it and I admire the contribution the Minister of State herself has made. One has to look carefully at the individual components of a third strand. The voice of those at the receiving end has to be heard and it should not always be mediated by professional mediators. The same would apply to the representatives of other social partners and where the interests of the third strand are being effectively represented by committed professional mediators one ought to look at whether ways can be found of enabling them to discharge that responsibility more effectively.

At present they are seriously handicapped and in many cases, although not in all, the degree of financial support for various components of the third strand varies greatly within the voluntary sector. It ought to be examined to see whether they can be assisted to make a more effective contribution in the context of the forum the Minister of State mentioned.

An Cathaoirleach

Is the amendment agreed to?

Professor Lee

No.

Amendment put.

The Seanad divided: Tá, 23; Níl, 16.

Tá

• Bohan, Eddie.
• Byrne, Seán.
• Calnan, Michael.
• Cashin, Bill.
• Crowley, Brian.
• Daly, Brendan.
• Fahey, Frank.
• Farrell, Willie.
• Finneran, Michael.
• Fitzgerald, Tom.
• Gallagher, Ann.
• Hillery, Brian.
• Kelleher, Billy.
• Kiely, Dan.
• Lanigan, Mick.
• Lydon, Don.
• McGowan, Paddy.
• Maloney, Sean.
• Mooney, Paschal.
• Mullooly, Brian.
• O'Brien, Francis.
• O'Sullivan, Jan.
• Wright, G.V.

Níl

• Belton, Louis J.
• Burke, Paddy.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Farrelly, John V.
• Howard, Michael.
• Lee, Joe.
• Manning, Maurice.
• Naughten, Liam.
• Cregan, Denis (Dino).
• Dardis, John.
• Doyle, Joe.
• O'Toole, Joe.
• Reynolds, Gerry.
• Ross, Shane P.N.
• Sherlock, Joe.
• Taylor-Quinn, Madeleine.

Tellers: Tá, Senators Mullooly and Calnan; Níl, Senators Lee and Sherlock.

Amendment declared carried.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

An Cathaoirleach

When is it proposed to sit again?

Mr. Wright

It is proposed to sit at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow.

An Cathaoirleach

Is that agreed? Agreed.