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Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 6 Apr 1995

Vol. 142 No. 15

Civil Legal Aid Bill, 1995: Committee Stage.

Sections 1 to 3, inclusive, agreed to.
SECTION 4.

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 6, subsection (2) (a), line 6, to delete "from time to time as occasion requires".

In a way this is simply a procedural point. It may be that this is standard language in legislation but I could not see the point of including the words "from time to time as occasion requires". I do not think it makes any difference to simply say "shall appoint". By definition, it has to be from time to time as we all operate within time. "...as occasion requires" seems to be covered by everything else that pertains to the appointment of the chairperson and the appointment of members later on in the text. I am really asking for information as to why that phraseology is used. Is there some reason why it is not as redundant as it appears to be?

The effect of the amendment would be to remove the words "from time to time as occasion requires". As I understand it, the office of the parliamentary draftsman uses those words in Bills of this type in order to ensure that the power conferred on a Minister is power which can be exercised by him or her every time the position of chairperson of the board becomes vacant. If those words were not included, the Minister might only have power to appoint the first chairperson. It could leave open the question of the power of the Minister to appoint a chairperson where the office of chairperson becomes vacant during that person's term of office.

I would not view it like that. However, I am quite prepared to accept that others might choose to read it as such and I am happy to accept the explanation.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 are alternatives to amendment No. 2 and all may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 6, subsection (3) (b), between lines 40 and 41, to insert the following paragraphs:

"(iii) 1 shall be a person nominated on a collective basis by law centres through which legal aid and advice is made available pursuant to the provisions of this Act,

(iv) 1 shall be a person nominated by such non-governmental organisations as the Minister shall, from time to time, by regulations prescribe,

(v) 1 shall be nominated by the Combat Poverty Agency,".

I welcome the Minister to the House. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that representatives of certain people are on the board. In the Bill the Minister has provided for gender equality by stating that there should be not less than five men and five women and that there should be representatives of solicitors and barristers. It is most important to include people on boards of this nature who know the position of those who will be using its services.

As a member of the Second Commission on the Status of Women, one of the difficulties we had with the Civil Legal Aid Board at that time was that it was an all male board when up to 80 per cent of its clients were women. The people who use the board and those who have particular expertise in dealing with aspects of the law usually dealt with by it, such as those in the centres governed by the board, should be represented on it.

We constantly hear, particularly in relation to the law and the Judiciary, that people involved in these areas are not aware of the realities of the daily lives of the people with which they deal. It is essential that the board represent areas of law and the people who will be using its services. It is particularly important that women's organisations are represented on the board since statistics show that the vast bulk of the Legal Aid Board's clients are women. Minority groups, such as those dealing with the disadvantaged, people with social welfare problems and disabilities and travellers, should also be represented on the board.

My amendment is similar to other amendments, but most Senators on this side of the House support this line. Even though there is a certain number of women, men and lawyers on the board, I fear they would not be particularly representative of the groups about which I am concerned. I urge the Minister to accept the amendment.

My amendment is similar and I support Senator Honan's comments. Rather than putting the service as it stands on a statutory, basis, we should strive to strengthen the type of service provided by way of civil legal aid. The Minister is anxious to do this. Representatives from the various bodies mentioned in the amendments would strengthen the civil legal aid service. It would also help to improve the type of statistical information and research material which might be required later. It is a worthy amendment and I support Senator Honan.

Section 4 (3) provides that in appointing members of the board, the Minister shall have regard to the desirability of their having knowledge or experience of the law, the practice and procedure of the courts, business, finance, management and administration, consumer or social affairs, or any other subject which, in the opinion of the Minister, would be of assistance to the board.

The effect of the amendments proposed by Senators Honan, McGennis, Quinn, O'Toole, Norris and Lee would be to grant specific statutory representation to a greater number of representatives of special interest groups than there are board members provided for in the Bill. One could think of many interest groups other than those suggested by the Senators which could equally claim representation on the board.

If I were to accommodate all the relevant interest groups I would have to appoint an enormous board, which would almost certainly be too unwieldy to adequately perform its functions. If that were to become the case the Members of the House could rightly take me to task for appointing far too many people to the board.

As I said, under the Bill the Minister is required to have regard to relevant interest groups when appointing the board. The flexibility afforded under the existing provisions in the Bill are necessary in order to ensure that as the Legal Aid Board continues to develop and expand, the appropriate expertise in all relevant areas can be made available at board level. To narrow the focus too much, by providing specifically for selected groupings, could in the future result in a Minister not being able to appoint to the board persons whose expertise might prove essential.

There is nothing in the Bill which precludes the board from consulting with the groups mentioned by the Senators. Such a process of consultation might well prove to be of more benefit to the groups in question and ultimately to the public which the Legal Aid Board will serve. With regret, I must oppose the amendments.

Senator Lee, you had a similar amendment. Do you wish to comment?

I have taken note of my failure to keep abreast of what is going on. I apologise for not speaking earlier. I support the principle advanced by Senator Honan. I wish to withdraw part of my amendment No. 5, which deals with the Consumers' Association of Ireland Limited. I confused this with the office of the Director of Consumer Affairs. I seek permission to withdraw that as it stands.

I wish to make two points. Under the heading citizens' information, the programme for Government states that, in consultation with the National Social Services Board and the Director of Consumer Affairs, the Government will overhaul the facilities available for community information, etc., with the purpose inter alia of upgrading and co-ordinating citizens' access to rights and entitlements. This has some relevance to this area. Perhaps we could linger over the issue of which groupings should be specifically incorporated in the board.

My amendment states that not less than one male and one female shall be appointed from categories eligible for legal aid and advice under the terms of this Bill. This involves an issue of principle which should be specifically addressed. There is no provision for membership of this board by people who would be eligible — for example, those who would be drawn from the category of less than £6,200 disposable income. Despite the fact that the legislation is well intentioned, we are in danger of always putting on boards people who will do things to and for others and other categories.

I think the Senator may be talking about amendment No. 10, which we will come to.

I am talking about amendment No. 5 to section 4, a Chathaoirligh. Am I running ahead? May I continue to talk about this?

It is an important principle, but I do not want to put it crudely in terms of ratios or balances. There is now, quite properly, gender balance or something along those lines. In a category such as this, where there is what one might loosely call a class dimension, there should be some provision for balance, if not class, which recognises the specific voice of those who would be voiceless in this context. There is an important principle involved and I ask the Minister to take serious cognisance of it.

I support Senator Lee's point about having a representative of those who are availing of the board's services. This is essential. The Minister explained the difficulty of having representatives which would satisfy all the different categories he listed.

Unless this is included in legislation it does not happen. We saw this in relation to the county enterprise boards when a previous Minister asked for 40 per cent of the boards' members to be women. The boards came back without that representation and the Minister had to add two members to every board. We can have the best of intentions, the Minister included, but he may not always be the Minister for Equality and Law Reform. These principles should be enshrined in the Bill so that one cannot deviate from them. It is essential that those who avail of the services believe the board is in tune with what they want; they want to feel confident the board will understand their difficulties and problems.

I find it difficult to accept the Minister's rejection of the amendment. We must ensure the people mentioned in my amendment are represented on the board. I understand the Minister's difficulties but it is important that these people be represented on the board.

The Minister's argument is valid and understandable. It is impossible to satisfy all claims for representation on the board. However, every organisation benefits from having a wider perspective. Every organisation has customers; the legal agencies may call them clients as opposed to customers. It is of benefit to find a way to have that voice heard at board level.

I agree with Senator Honan that this Minister may not always be in that position and he may be replaced by another Minister who may not adhere to the same policies. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to have actual customers on the board, but there must be a means of tying the hands of future Ministers to make sure there are representatives of the people who are likely to use the services.

I suggest the Combat Poverty Agency would be a suitable representation. There should be representation from organisations experienced in delivering legal services, such as those already in existence, and representation from voluntary organisations. This is worthy of consideration as it will tie the hands of a future Minister to make sure the clients are being represented in some form, those who are availing of rather than performing the services. I urge the Minister to consider that.

I may be a little confused but I am surprised at the Minister's reluctance to accept these amendments. The Minister said there will be a chairperson and 12 members. Two of those shall be barristers, two shall be solicitors, two shall be staff members, but it is not indicated where the remainder should come from. It would be no great show of equality if we were to allow two staff members on the board when the users of the service are not to have any say there.

It is difficult for people to have their grievances acknowledged, particularly those not familiar with the law. Even if one is paying for the service, it is difficult to have any complaint about the delivery of a legal service acknowledged. There should be people on the board who are not barristers and solicitors because we all get tied up in our own bureaucratic quangos and languages. One also needs somebody completely removed from all of that to be able to ask the simple questions. We all end up doing things because they were done in that way in the past.

I support Senator Lee's amendment. Whatever reluctance the Minister may have about national voluntary organisations, he cannot possibly be reluctant to appoint somebody from the Combat Poverty Agency or FLAC to the board; it is appropriate they be represented. I do not know where the balance of the membership is to come from, but if it requires an increase of a maximum of three people I would agree to an amendment on Report Stage to increase the membership slightly.

To provide more civil legal aid than before and to make it the kind of service we want, these amendments should be accepted.

I support the spirit of what has been said. However, looking at the three different amendments indicates how difficult it is to pinpoint how one indicates in law how one would have such representation. Senator Lee's amendment is the only one which specifies clients. On that basis I accept the Minister's view that if one was to try to include all the various viewpoints there would be too many members on the board. The spirit of what has been said should be accepted by the Minister, but I see his point that it is difficult to include the representation of clients' interests on the board in the Bill. The fact that there have been different ideas put forward in the three amendments indicates how difficult it is to include it in the legislation.

The difficulty raised by Senator O'Sullivan can be readily resolved by the Minister giving us a commitment to introduce a Government amendment on Report Stage which would embrace the points we have made to him. I am not convinced by the validity of the Minister's response. He made the point that this could lead to an enormous board. I suggest the provisions of section 4 (3) (a) would indicate the need for an enormous board more so than the tenor of the amendments being discussed. It includes people who have a knowledge of a range of different matters. I hope we can find this renaissance person who embraces all these characteristics. I am sure the Minister will make a valiant attempt to do so.

Section 4 (3) (a) explicitly refers to people with a knowledge of consumer or social affairs. It is reasonable that the consumers of the service are entitled to representation on the board. There are many precedents which I would point out to the Minister. The Bord Bia Bill, 1994, the Heritage Bill, 1994, and the Environmental Protection Agency legislation embodied these principles whereby representative organisations would have people on the boards.

I am suspicious of the need to have two barristers on the board. There is tendency to create an establishment, if my knowledge of barristers is anything to go by. However, I will defer to the Minister's more expert opinion in this regard. I do not see the need to have two barristers there for seven years and two solicitors. Let the barristers or the solicitors be representative of organisations which would appropriately need to be represented here.

Having responsibility for equality, the Minister will recognise the need for equity, which is the thrust of the amendments. They are about allowing the consumers of the service to have representation and widening the scope — not the numbers — of that representation. Senator Quinn has been consistent in suggesting that consumers be represented on such boards. This is a classic case in which the users of the service should be represented, and not only the users of the service but people who have expertise and belong to representative organisations with an interest in this matter. There are plenty of precedents to this effect in legislation. I recommend that while the Minister may not accept each amendment, he could bring in a Government amendment on Report Stage to embody the thrust of the arguments made.

I have a certain understanding for the Minister's position. It would be desirable to have the membership of the board as low as possible. The maximum should be 12 people. I would favour eight or nine people, because the bigger the board the less are the chances of action and decision making. Experience has shown small boards to be more effective.

I ask the Minister about the location of the board. We discussed this when setting up the Irish Aviation Authority when attempts were made to include in the legislation the location of the headquarters of the board. While various centres have been mentioned in the explanatory memorandum, there is no mention of where the board will be located. The Minister will be aware that it has been Government policy to decentralise new authorities and agencies and to locate the headquarters and administration outside Dublin in provincial locations. Does the Minister have a view on that? Is it the intention to rubber stamp the existing Civil Legal Aid Board or will a new chairman and board be appointed?

This probably relates to another section, but the Minister may comment if he wishes.

I understand the Minister's difficulties in that nobody would wish to be tied down to a series of categories of specific representatives. It seems the professions, particularly those delivering the service professionally, are well represented statutorily. Clients should also be statutorily represented. I believe that is a good principle. Will the Minister be flexible and look again at this area and perhaps prepare an amendment for Report Stage? The Combat Poverty Agency and FLAC seem obvious choices because these groups, practically on a voluntary basis, compose this service and have clear expertise. I cannot think of a more appropriate body to be statutorily represented than FLAC.

Perhaps the Minister will take on board the principle that not only the professional elite who deliver the service but also the clients who use it, the consumers, to employ a phrase used by Senator Dardis, should also have some degree of statutory representation. I accept the Minister's difficulties in that there is a myriad of worthy organisations which could be named. If one were to name every organisation which might have a claim the situation would become unmanageable. However, I am sure the Minister could use discretion and take into account interest groups which have prominently and repeatedly been mentioned by Senators on all sides of the House in this debate.

I notice that there has not been a strong principled objection from the Government side. Perhaps the Minister will indicate at this point whether he understands the motivation of those proposing these amendments and will look again at instituting two further statutory posts representing the clients of the service and FLAC, which has the expertise because it has been at the coalface for many years. The functions of the board will be depleted unless they are statutorily appointed to it. The case has been well made by Senators Lee and Quinn that we may not always have the services of a Minister of this calibre and that we may have one who might not wish these voices to be represented as a matter of political convenience.

I take up straightaway what Senator Norris said. It is not just a question that we may not always have a Minister of this calibre; we will not. Although the Minister may not believe it, we are trying to be helpful, even if he may not approve of the way we are going about it. It seems that we may be exaggerating the administrative difficulties involved to some extent. I do not see the need to expand the size of the board in the light of what is in the Bill, and Senator Dardis effectively made this point. Section 4 (1) states: "The Board shall consist of a chairperson and 12 ordinary members", while section 4 (3) (a) lists eight categories which the Minister would like represented. Two refer directly to law and presumably cover barristers and solicitors, one, much less two in each case. This would leave six categories and eight remaining people.

There is no reason a barrister or solicitor could not have expertise in more than simply law. I am sure they could have some administrative expertise. If the will is there, there should be no difficulty specifically mentioning some of the agencies. The Combat Poverty Agency is listed in Senator Honan's and the other amendments. I agree with what Senator Norris said about FLAC. It is not listed here, but it would certainly be in the spirit of my amendment about representation from categories, even if FLAC members are not members of those categories. It would be a step in the right direction.

If, God forbid, I was disposed to polemical speech, I would remind the Minister that there used to be a party in this country which, if memory serves me, was called the Labour Party, which was concerned about class and deprivation. I hope the Minister, who was one of the most articulate representatives of that view——

He still is.

——will see the logic of what we are saying from an ideological point of view. Although the emphasis is on consumers, it goes beyond that because it refers to a particular category of consumer who are not in a position to fend for themselves effectively and to whom one would wish to give some institutionalised advice in this direction.

As regards the administrative problems listed by the Minister and to which Senator O'Sullivan referred, if the will is there they would not be as insuperable as suggested. Some of the categories mentioned in section 4 (3) (a) could be concretised into being represented by the Combat Poverty Agency and FLAC at the very least.

I agree in principle with the amendments, but I also agree with Senator Daly that the extension of the size of the board would be counter-productive. I believe the board is too large as it is, because the tighter the board, the better the decision and the more the likelihood of a decision. From my experience of boards, difficulties arise and there is factionalising if they exceed ten people.

The 12 Apostles did very well.

Some 25 per cent of the board at present is from the legal profession, which is quite high. I agree with the proposal that FLAC should be represented. I hope that a FLAC representative would be included in the 25 per cent of the legal profession, because it would be more than likely that members of FLAC would be legal people. To extend legal representation on the board beyond 25 per cent would be counterproductive on the basis of the amendments proposed. Under no circumstances should we extend the board. In fact, I would be in favour of reducing the board, if possible. Obviously, the Minister has looked at this and he believes that 12 is an appropriate level. The suggestions made have merit and I hope the Minister will take them on board. I look forward to the Minister's response to the amendments put down by those on the other side of the House.

I thank Senators for their constructive contributions. The question of extending the size of the board is not tenable and I agree with the comments made by Senator Daly and Senator Neville. I believe boards should be tight, close and efficient. They are there primarily to deliver a service and to do a job. Having two barristers and two solicitors on the board is absolutely essential. We are concerned with the running of the biggest legal business in the country. It requires knowledge and expertise of what is going on in it to deliver an efficient service. There is no point in having a grandiose board and pumping an increasing amount of taxpayers' money into the service, which the current and previous Governments have done at my request, if that money is going to be dissipated en route and the most efficient delivery and range of services is not provided. Senator Quinn, in particular, knows what I mean by the kind of efficiency which is necessary. A knowledge of the business is required. In this case we are talking about business involving the law, courts, solicitors and barristers. The calibre of representation is very important.

It is also important that the representation or interests of clients or consumers should be taken account of in the best possible way. This is why, as well as the other levels of expertise that are required, the Bill provides for the categories of consumer — the consumer is the client — and social affairs. Nobody would deny that expertise or participation in those areas are essential. Would anybody deny that business knowledge would have a major contributory role to play in the organisation of the service, which has a budget of £5 million to £6 million and 40 law centres operating throughout the country as individual major law firms? The organisation of the service's finance and the management and administration systems are all factors in the equation.

The question of a client representative was raised. Who are the clients? Do we mean former clients, people with cases pending, or people who might have cases in the future? Anybody and everybody was, is or could be clients. I am not clear about the logistics of how representation for clients could be organised. It was suggested that there could be a nominee of FLAC or Combat Poverty on the board. With very little effort one could list between ten and 20 voluntary organisations which could be given representation. The question arises whether nominees from any of these organisations would themselves be clients of law centres. I would rather if that was not the position and that the nominees would be organisers, administrators or members of the board of one or other of these organisations. There has to be representation in some form or another and this is specifically provided for in the Bill. I will have this very much to the forefront of my mind when I appoint the members of the board.

Gender balance is a very important factor. The previous board consisted entirely of men. This is totally unacceptable, particularly when the overwhelming majority of clients are women. It is very important that women should be well represented. Rather than relying on the Government's directive on the appointment of boards, I have written into the Bill the gender requirement that at least five members of the board must be men and at least five must be women. I have put this very important representational point beyond yea or nay.

Senator Daly raised the question of the headquarters of the new board. I have not adverted to this. The headquarters is and always has been in Dublin. I do not know whether it might be possible to decentralise it. I will consider this and would have no objection in principle to doing so if it was reasonably possible and could conveniently be done.

The present board's term will expire at the end of this month and it will be necessary to appoint a new one. The new board may not be the statutory one provided for in the Bill. This would depend on whether the Bill has gone through all Stages in both Houses, which is unlikely by the end of the month. If this is not possible, an interim non-statutory board will be appointed when the present one's term runs out.

I have tried to ensure we have an efficient board which will use its resources to deliver the most efficient and expert services and make the best possible use of the greatly increased taxpayers' funds which have been properly given to it to provide these services. New centres have been established throughout the country. For the first time ever we have a centre in every county. The number of people employed by the board has doubled since I became Minister. It is important that this progress and efficiency be continued, while at the same time providing a balance on the board between the different areas of expertise which are necessary.

It is my intention in appointing the board to have full cognisance of and pay full attention to section 4 (3) (a), which sets out the parameters and qualifications of the people to be appointed to it. I believe the board will be representative and will have only one objective. I will ensure that it runs a tight and efficient ship which will deliver the broadest range of services to the maximum number of people possible within the resources devolved to it from time to time by the Oireachtas.

The Minister anticipated a compliment I was about to deliver to him on the question of gender balance. The Bill's provision on this is a very considerable advance. This is a good Bill and the Minister is a good one. The Bill advances the situation in terms of the delivery of legal services. We are trying to make the Bill even better.

Section 4 (3) (a) does not tie the Minister into anything. I may be incorrect but it seems to me to be capable of an entirely aspirational interpretation. It says he "shall have regard". One can have regard to something by saying one has regarded it but after taking various alternative factors into consideration one has decided on this occasion to take a different course of action. The section also refers to desirability. I am often told that certain things I propose are desirable but we cannot afford them, or they are not politically practicable or whatever. I see this subsection as being capable of a virtually totally aspirational interpretation. For that reason it does not satisfy me that consumers are necessarily represented. They may not be. I am happy that this Minister will certainly make sure they are and that this will operate not as an aspirational section but as a fully implemented one. There is no question in my mind that another Government composed of the present Government parties or other parties might contain a Minister who did not take that view.

With regard to barristers and solicitors the Minister is absolutely right. The service has to be efficient and these are the professionals. If we want to deliver a professional service in a crisp and businesslike fashion we must have the involvement of these people. However, it is also possible to envisage a worse case scenario, to use the rather ugly Americanism, in which a Minister who is not sympathetic to the operation of this system might appoint from the profession, which can sometimes be viewed as conservative and paternalistic, persons who were not fully in sympathy with this service, certainly in terms of its client structure.

For that reason it is very important that those delivering the service on the ground, particularly FLAC, and those who represent the client base are represented on the board. The client base is, generally speaking, a fairly deprived section of the population and it is very important that a group such as the Combat Poverty Agency is included. Senator Lee made a very telling point about the ethos of the Labour Party and its concern for the marginalised. I hope that the Minister will give some indication of flexibility.

I would not feel comfortable insisting on specific named bodies at this point. However, in order to make it the kind of efficient mechanism for the delivery of legal aid about which the Minister spoke so tellingly, this kind of representation should be in place by statute in order to guard against the situation of a less liberal and socially aware Minister taking certain decisions not in the interests of the clients. I hope that the Minister will give this indication because I have developed political antennae and I feel a vote gathering somewhere. I would not greatly relish voting against the Government on this, but I am afraid that I would be tempted to do so unless there was some degree of commitment.

I feel particularly strongly about FLAC and the Combat Poverty Agency, because on the one hand there are the delivers of the service, who were there when it was necessary — when, as Myles na gCopaleen used to say, it was neither popular nor profitable — and on the other hand there are the groups who represent the marginalised. The Minister is right in saying that it would be unrealistic to think that a client representative on a client basis could be established but it is possible to have an organisation which can be assumed to represent their interests.

I am very relieved to see that Senator Norris's mind has returned from Los Angeles where, he told us yesterday, it was residing. Something happened overnight which has definitely improved the situation.

I agree with the point which the Minister made about balance, and I do not just mean gender balance. The core of the argument is that the balance in the board should be there by statute and not at the Minister's discretion. I accept that this Minister will ensure that that balance is there, but I have reservations about it continuing into the future.

There are, as I said, precedents for this. The racing authority Bill was quite significantly amended as it went through the Houses to include, for example, representatives of the racecourses, who are the consumers of that service. It has been put into legislation. I had intended to make the point which Senator Lee made about Labour's attitude to matters of this nature. I am surprised that those who are disadvantaged, the users of the service, are not represented, particularly given that a Labour Minister is piloting the Bill through the House.

I accept what the Minister said about the need for efficiency, but it should also be representative; there is not an inconsistency between those two things. With regard to the numbers, even if we accept that there should be two barristers, two solicitors and two staff members on the board, that still leaves six members, which allows a fair amount of scope without expanding the board.

I hope that the Minister could accommodate the sentiments which are being expressed by tabling an amendment on Report Stage to include, perhaps not all, but at least some of these representative groups on the board. That would strengthen the work of the board and its efficiency. Partnership is central to the whole ethos of modern government and community. If that partnership is to exist, the partnership between the various organisations and between the statutory bodies and the organisations should be enshrined within the legislation. We are not asking for the size of the board to be increased, but it should be representative and that should be embodied in statute. If the Minister is looking for people with financial expertise he need look no farther than the barristers of the country, who appear to have that aspect of their activity honed to a very fine degree.

What about Senators who are on £400 a day, according to The Sunday Tribune?

Yes, we are all living very well, obviously. Section 4 (3) (a), which was referred to on several occasions, states that in appointing persons to the board the Minister shall have regard to their "business, finance, management and administration" experience or their experience "of any other subject which would, in the opinion of the Minister, be of assistance to the board". That gives fairly wide discretion. There is much larger scope within that paragraph to argue that the board should be expanded, which I am not arguing, than there is in the amendments. The amendments are not arguing for the board to be expanded.

I endorse what Senators Dardis and Norris said. There is no conflict between efficiency and equity in terms of membership of the board. Any attempt to present this as a demand to increase the size of the board is simply misunderstanding what is being said. The issue could be partly resolved if the Minister was prepared to give a commitment that with regard to the legal members of the board he would nominate representatives of FLAC and the Combat Poverty Agency. In other words, representatives of some of the agencies which we mentioned could be included as the legal members of the board.

I was somewhat disturbed, if the Minister does not mind me so saying, at the reaction to the principle of client representation. If that is accepted in principle, then there is no problem in finding ways of implementing it. With regard to the question of whether members of the board might be involved in a case, by definition members of boards stand down if they are involved in an issue concerning that board. That can be teased through without any great difficulty if the will is there to accept the principle. I was somewhat uncertain about whether he was accepting the principle. If one was to push what was said to its logical conclusion, one might say, in effect, that nobody who might have a consumer interest in the matter ought to be directly represented. I am sure that is not what he meant but that is how it came across to me.

It seems rather a waste of time to have to debate this section so much because the Minister said that section 4 (3) (a) embodies what we are trying to achieve. He then went on to make the case for enshrining it in law. Had the Minister not enshrined gender equality in this Bill, we would be talking about the situation to which Senator Honan referred which happened throughout the country where, while it was expressed as desirable to have gender balance on boards and so on, it did not happen. The Minister recognises the pitfalls of not enshrining the rights of specific groups in law; in this case, the legal right to gender balance on the board.

Unless the Minister strengthens section 4 (3) (a), in which he says that the various organisations which we mentioned should form part of the composition of this board, I agree with Senator Norris that we have an aspiration which will not be achieved. With all due respect, we all know about political appointments to boards, regardless of who is in Government. That will continue to happen, such is the nature of politics. Amendments Nos 2 and 4 identify the exact same bodies, which means three members, while Senator Lee mentioned another one. Therefore, we are talking about specifying a maximum of four groups which should be represented on the board.

There is no point moving amendments if we are only playing games. We should not waste the Minister's time or our own time if we intend backing down on this issue. However, in an attempt to achieve the spirit of the amendments — and the Minister says he does not have a problem with this — will the Minister agree to appointing three people on the nomination of representative groups?

We wish to achieve the objective of these amendments. I did not spend yesterday morning proposing amendments to win or lose a vote; I did it because we had all been lobbied and advised on this matter and I expressed reservations on Second Stage regarding the narrowness of the Bill. The Minister appeared to be receptive to these reservations and if the board is to be better than the non-statutory board, we must enshrine some of the amendments proposed to the Bill.

The entirety of the board will be representative of the interests of the consumer. The Legal Aid Board and the organisation are not comparable to a business. The board of a business has the interests of two categories of people in mind — its customers, for whom it wants to do its best, and its shareholders. In addition it has an interest in profit and there is a balance to be struck between these two aspects. However, this is not a profit making organisation; it is a board being established to run a service for people using taxpayers' funds. I will, therefore, only appoint to the board a person who, under any of these categories, will be representative of the interests of the people it is intended to serve.

We can all agree that it would not be a practical proposition to have former, existing or future potential clients of the board to elect a client representative. Consideration must be given to people who are not clients as such — either actual or potential — but would be representing the interests of clients, which all members of the board must do. Senator Lee misread my position if he believed that the consumer interest should not be well represented. This was not my position; far from it. Indeed, I wrote into the Bill the necessity to consider the consumer's position; that is one of the areas of expertise which is required.

I am seeking an efficient board which has representatives of all the levels of expertise that are required to run properly, professionally and efficiently an organisation of the size. All the qualifications listed in section 4 (3) (a) are essential. Knowledge and experience of the law is needed, as is knowledge of the practise and procedure of the courts, business, finance, management, administration and consumer or social affairs.

Women members are also needed. The Government which appointed the existing board represented by the parties in the House today, did not pay much attention to that because the board is comprised 100 per cent of men. This should be remembered because it is an important factor as the overwhelming majority of the consumers of the Legal Aid Board are women. I am addressing this issue in the Bill, and representatives of parties which appointed that board when in Government should bear in mind what their parties did on that occasion.

The Minister is making the case for the amendments.

There are a large number of wide ranging voluntary organisations which could, in theory, claim to have rights of appointment to the Legal Aid Board. A number of them have been mentioned in the House — the Combat Poverty Agency, FLAC, the Consumers' Association, the LSSB and many more. It is not possible to nominate three, four, two or whatever members and it would be invidious to do so. However, I am anxious that the degree of expertise which I consider necessary for an efficient board should be represented on it. I believe I have achieved this is section 4 (3) (a) of the Bill and I am unable to agree to the suggestion that there be nominating rights by three organisations. Further consideration of the wording of section 4 (3) (a) is a different matter and if the Members withdraw these amendments, I will consider the wording on that basis to see if it can be strengthened. That is as far as I can go on the matter.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We have discussed this at length. I will allow for brief questions to the Minister. I call on Senator Norris.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is showing some flexibility with regard to section 4 (3) (a). The language employed is middle class in tone, which is inevitable, but I am attempting to imagine the situation of the client and consider how, in some way, client representation can be involved. For example, the term "consumer affairs" is a very middle class concept. The board may not deal with people who are middle class, but people who are expert in that area will almost invariably be middle class. The same is true of the term "social affairs". There is, therefore, no real movement towards representation of the under class in society.

I am taken with Senator Lee's suggestion with regard to numbers on the provision made for the board to include two barristers and two solicitors. It would be useful if there could be a direction that they should have some experience in delivering this specific kind of aid. Perhaps one of the barristers and solicitors might be specified as having engaged in these services. Taking a theoretical case, section 4 (3) (b) (i) provides that of the members of the board, "2 shall be barristers who have been engaged in practice as such for a period of not less than 7 years prior to their appointment...". Virtually the same provision pertains to solicitors. However, a Government may appoint somebody who was in practice for seven years but exclusively as a libel lawyer if a barrister and conveyancing if a solicitor. This would not necessarily represent a wide area of expertise and certainly would not represent the kind of under class we are addressing, because members of this class do not normally take libel actions and they are not often involved in conveyancing.

Will the Minister be specific and advise the House if he is prepared not just to consider the wording, but to introduce specific amendments on Report Stage to take account of the problems which we have outlined on this side of the House?

I disagree with the sentiments expressed by Senator Norris. Every solicitor or barrister has passed his or her professional examinations and, if they are practising solicitors or barristers and specialise in one area of law, that does not mean they are ignorant of other areas, or of the principles of law and the responsibilities they have as professional people.

The Senator is underlining the establishment argument.

If the amendments are withdrawn I am prepared to consider the wording of section 4 (3) (a) to see whether the representational aspect can be strengthened. I do not wish to mislead the House by suggesting that I would consider identifying any specific organisations from the large number in existence and write in specific nomination rights for them. From my experience of dealing with the Civil Legal Aid Board over the past two years, I know that would not be appropriate nor would it meet its needs or requirements. I know where I want the Civil Legal Aid Board to go. I know the needs of that situation and what expertise is required to deliver the service to the people. It is not to provide sinecures for any particular organisation. I want people who are committed to the needs of past, present and future consumers. That is my objective and I know the calibre of the people needed. If it will help, I will look at the wording of the section to see if I can strengthen it in some way to meet the comments expressed. That is as far as I can go on this issue.

Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 23; Níl, 26.

  • Bohan, Eddie.
  • Byrne, Seán.
  • Daly, Brendan.
  • Dardis, John.
  • Farrell, Willie.
  • Honan, Cathy.
  • Kelleher, Billy.
  • Kiely, Dan.
  • Kiely, Rory.
  • Lanigan, Mick.
  • Lee, Joe.
  • Lydon, Don.
  • McGennis, Marian.
  • Mulcahy, Michael.
  • Mullooly, Brian.
  • Norris, David.
  • O'Brien, Francis.
  • O'Kennedy, Michael.
  • O'Toole, Joe.
  • Ormonde, Ann.
  • Quinn, Feargal.
  • Roche, Dick.
  • Wright, G.V.

Níl

  • Belton, Louis J.
  • Burke, Paddy.
  • Calnan, Michael.
  • Cashin, Bill.
  • Cosgrave, Liam.
  • Cotter, Bill.
  • Cregan, Denis (Dino).
  • Doyle, Joe.
  • Enright, Thomas W.
  • Farrelly, John V.
  • Howard, Michael.
  • Kelly, Mary.
  • McDonagh, Jarlath.
  • Magner, Pat.
  • Maloney, Sean.
  • Manning, Maurice.
  • Naughten, Liam.
  • Neville, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Jan.
  • Reynolds, Gerry.
  • Ross, Shane P.N.
  • Sherlock, Joe.
  • Taylor-Quinn, Madeleine.
  • Townsend, Jim.
  • Wall, Jack.
  • Wilson, Gordon.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Dardis and Honan; Níl, Senators Cosgrave and Magner.
Amendment declared lost.
Government amendment No. 3:
In page 6, subsection (3) (b) (iii), line 41, to delete "staff members" and substitute "members of the staff of the Board".

This is a technical amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 6, subsection (3) (b), between lines 43 and 44, to insert the following new subparagraphs:

"(vi) 1 shall be a representative of the Combat Poverty Agency.

(vii) 1 shall be a representative of organisations involved in the delivery of legal services, and

(viii) 1 shall be a representative of national voluntary organisations.".

Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 23; Níl, 26.

  • Bohan, Eddie.
  • Byrne, Seán.
  • Daly, Brendan.
  • Dardis, John.
  • Farrell, Willie.
  • Honan, Cathy.
  • Kelleher, Billy.
  • Kiely, Dan.
  • Kiely, Rory.
  • Lanigan, Mick.
  • Lee, Joe.
  • Lydon, Don.
  • McGennis, Marian.
  • Mulcahy, Michael.
  • Mullooly, Brian.
  • Norris, David.
  • O'Brien, Francis.
  • O'Kennedy, Michael.
  • O'Toole, Joe.
  • Ormonde, Ann.
  • Quinn, Feargal.
  • Roche, Dick.
  • Wright, G.V.

Níl

  • Belton, Louis J.
  • Burke, Paddy.
  • Calnan, Michael.
  • Cashin, Bill.
  • Cosgrave, Liam.
  • Cotter, Bill.
  • Cregan, Denis (Dino).
  • Doyle, Joe.
  • Enright, Thomas W.
  • Farrelly, John V.
  • Howard, Michael.
  • Kelly, Mary.
  • McDonagh, Jarlath.
  • Magner, Pat.
  • Maloney, Sean.
  • Manning, Maurice.
  • Naughten, Liam.
  • Neville, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Jan.
  • Reynolds, Gerry.
  • Ross, Shane P.N.
  • Sherlock, Joe.
  • Taylor-Quinn, Madeleine.
  • Townsend, Jim.
  • Wall, Jack.
  • Wilson, Gordon.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Mullooly and Roche; Níl, Senators Cosgrave and Magner.
Amendment declared lost.

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 6, between lines 43 and 44, to insert the following new subparagraphs:

"(vi) not less than one male, and one female, shall be appointed from categories eligible for legal aid and advice under the terms of this Act.

(vii) not less than one member shall be a representative of The Consumers Association of Ireland Ltd."

I adhere very much to the principle of this amendment, but I do not want to have a vote on it.

It is not being pressed?

No, it is being pressed.

The amendment has not been withdrawn, a Chathaoirligh.

It is not being withdrawn, I accept that. But you cannot break up the amendment; you take the whole amendment.

Amendment put and declared lost.

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 7, subsection (4) (e) line 13, after "office", to insert "for stated reasons".

This is simply in the interests of so-called transparency. The Bill states that "The Minister may at any time remove a member of the board from office", and I added in the words "for stated reasons". That must be in accordance with good Government practice. I do not wish to argue it beyond that at the moment. It is self evident.

In circumstances where the Minister might deem it appropriate to dismiss a member of the board, natural justice requires that he or she be given reasons for his or her dismissal. For that reason Senator Lee's amendment, which would expressly require the Minister to state his or her reason for dismissing a board member, is unnecessary.

Is that to say that it is already implicit in the statement here?

It is implicit in that natural justice requires it.

It is implicit in that natural justice requires it. So we can take it that if a member ever were removed, the reasons would be stated.

That would be the position, yes.

If it is implicit in natural justice, why do we find this set of words frequently used in legislation? I should imagine that the amendment proposed by Senator Lee follows on a precedent which appears in many other cases. The phrase "stated reason" appears in regard to impeachment, removal of people from the courts and removal of Commissioners from the Commission of the European Union. It would seem to me that the Minister could reasonably accept Senator Lee's proposal without losing anything.

Is it not the case that in order to have the process of natural justice implemented in that case, there would need to be a judicial review? As it stands, I presume that we are referring to the natural justice which would allow access to the reasons for a dismissal and a person's opportunity to respond to the evidence against him or her. There is no requirement to do that. In order to ensure that that would be done somebody would have to have recourse to law in the first place, either to have a judicial review or some such other procedure.

I put it differently. The position is that natural justice would require that if the person was dismissed they would be given the reasons for their dismissal. If these reasons were not given then the question of review would arise. The Bill was drafted in the current format by the draftsman and I have no objection to going back to the draftsman and querying this point if that would be of help.

That is fair enough. I was going to ask if the stated reasons would be stated reasons to the individual concerned, but there would be potential public concern about the matter also. I was going to inquire whether the reasons would become public as envisaged here, but if the Minister is prepared to go back to the draftsman I am prepared to accept that.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 are related and may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 7, subsection (5) (a), line 15, to delete "may" and substitute "shall".

"The Minister may fix a date, time and place for the first sitting of the board". Is that the provision we are referring to? Is the word "may" again a part of draftsman procedure? Could the word "shall" not be used? It may be a pernickety semantic point. I am sorry. I am looking at the wrong line. This is more serious.

There should be an obligation on the Minister to appoint a replacement in the event of a vacancy occurring, for whatever the reason may be stated. There is an assumption running through a number of the subsequent provisions that vacancies are almost a matter of normalcy. Any committee appointed by the board may act notwithstanding one or more than one vacancy among its members. It seems to me undesirable that a vacancy should be left without an obligation being on the Minister to fill the vacancy within a reasonable time period.

Section 4 (5) (a) provides that the Minister may appoint a person to be a member of a board to fill a vacancy occasioned by the death or resignation of a member or where a member becomes disqualified or is removed from office. The effect of Senator Lee's amendments would be to require the Minister to fill any such vacancy within three months of the vacancy arising. While I fully appreciate the Senator's concern that there should be no undue delay in filling vacancies as they arise, it would not be practical in some cases to make provision on the lines suggested by the Senator. For example, it might be necessary for a Minister to dismiss a member of a board. That member might contest the basis for his or her dismissal. In such circumstances if the Senator's amendments were to be accepted the Minister could find himself or herself under a statutory obligation to fill a vacancy of a dismissed member where that member's appeal against his or her dismissal was under consideration. For these reasons I cannot accept the amendments.

I can see the logic of that, but a case where a member has died or resigned is entirely different and one would hope that the majority of vacancies, while one does not wish death to intrude, obviously, would not have to result from forced resignation as a result of inadequate discharge of duties on the board. I hope that would never arise. I may have presented it in an obtuse way here from a procedural point of view, but the principle of what I am saying still stands.

I did not catch what the Minister said in relation to the words "may" and "shall" and there should not be any problem substituting "shall" for "may". While I accept what the Minister is saying and I would not want to put him in a position where he would have 13 members of the board where statutorily he should have only 12, I do not understand how a vacancy could occur on the board while somebody is appealing their disqualification, so that should cover the point the Minister raised.

The point I was making was that if the question of the person's disqualification was in issue, if the Minister was contending that the person was disqualified and the person was contending they were not, there could be a lawsuit pending to determine that issue. If the Minister was obligated within three months to fill the vacancy, the court might later decide that there was no vacancy at all so a difficulty might arise. As to the point in regard to "may" or "shall", that degree of discretion has to be left there. While in the overwhelming majority of cases it is true that a Minister would wish to bring the board back up to full strength within a reasonable time, there might be circumstances — for example, if the board was virtually at the end of its term — where it might be inappropriate to do that. Very often vacancies in this House are filled at very short notice with short time spans to run and some people have views about that. However, there could be cases — it would not arise very often — where if there was a month or two left of the term of that board a Minister might decide that it was not worthwhile to bring in a new person. It might not warrant the benefit that would accrue by having that person serve for just a month or two. There could be such circumstances and it is just to leave that discretionary period there that the section is framed in that way.

I cannot go along with the reasoning of that argument. A court would more likely decide that the person was incorrectly dismissed rather than that there was no vacancy. That would be the normal process. A process of judicial review and an investigation of a dismissal could take a couple of years. Effectively, what you are saying is that in the event of a person being removed from the board, it may not be possible within the term of office to replace somebody. It seems to me that, normally, following removal and reappointment, and in the event of a judicial review or a court deciding that the person was incorrectly dismissed, the person might have an action on that basis. There may be a question of liability or compensation of some description. For instance, in the operation of the Unfair Dismissals Act, which is the only parallel that comes to mind, by the time the majority of cases come to hearing the position will have been filled. There is often a six months period of appeal before a person needs to lodge an appeal under the Unfair Dismissals Act, and it could take up to a year to hear it after that. The legislation itself anticipates that by allowing for certain elements of compensation to be tied into it. People are concerned that vacancies would not be filled and that is a fair point.

The second aspect of the Minister's explanation was that if there was a short period it would be reasonable that a Minister should have some discretion rather than appoint somebody for a very short period and then have the board reconstituted, perhaps under a different political management, because these things tend to happen. Senator O'Toole's point addresses the Minister's first explanation. If we were to accept the first explanation the Minister gave — that we would have to wait until appeals procedures were exhausted — it could result in several vacancies existing for an almost interminable period of time. Senator Lee's idea of putting into the Act some compulsion for an appointment to be made — perhaps within a specific three month period — would give the delays a finite period. In general, it is good that there should be finite periods during which there can be delays in these matters in order that the issues can be brought to a head.

There is no point in appointing a board and then letting it be understaffed because of the potential for legal action or some redress. The point made by Senator O'Toole illustrates this well; that you could be delayed for maybe six months while a person is deciding to appeal, up to a year when an appeal is being processed, and that there may be some appeals on points of law after that. So, where does it stop? I understand what the Minister is saying, but if we accept the first point of the Minister's explanation it is the most cogent argument that you could possibly put forward for Senator Lee's proposition. Senator Lee should stick to his proposition and we will support it.

I could not agree with that suggestion. I do not think that you should stick with Senator Lee's proposition at all because it is very seriously flawed. Senator O'Toole made an interesting point, but he is missing an important distinction between the unfair dismissals-type position and the position that would arise under a statutory board. If a person is using the unfair dismissals procedure against his employer — be it a factory, supermarket or whatever — it may well be that the tribunal would order that person to be reinstated. That is done on occasion and there is no problem about it. If the tribunal orders that person to be reinstated, then that person is reinstated and that is the end of it. Whereas before there were 150 people employed in that enterprise, as a result of the decision of the Employment Appeals Tribunal there will now be 151.

But the situation that we are talking about here is quite different. This is a position where there is a fixed statutory maximum number of members on the board. Let us take the situation of a person who left that board and challenged in the High Court whether their dismissal from that board was valid or not. If in the intervening period while that High Court proceeding was awaiting determination, the Minister appointed a person to that vacancy — thereby bringing the board to full maximum statutory strength — and then the High Court found that the dismissal was totally invalid, the person who was purported to have been dismissed would be deemed to have always been the legal member of that statutory board. That would perhaps throw a questionmark over the validity of decisions of the board made with the participation of a person who was never, in effect, validly a member of it. That is very different to the unfair dismissals-type situation where there is no statutory maximum constraint on the number of people in the employment of an institution.

I had not anticipated the range of issues that was going to arise on this proposal. Would it satisfy the majority of points raised if instead of saying "shall appoint", it said "shall normally appoint"? That would in effect accept that issues of the type that have been addressed may arise but are unlikely to arise most of the time in the normal functioning of boards. At a hypothetical extreme the whole board could be dismissed and the Minister would not be in a position to reappoint until all these steps had been worked through. I wonder if that would be helpful in terms of reconciling the differing positions advanced here.

I wondered what would happen if an extra person was appointed. The point I made was whether the Minister would deem that a vacancy had occurred while somebody was challenging their dismissal. I think that he or she would not. In relation to somebody dying or resigning, Senator Lee's amendment is correct and should be incorporated. I am of the view that the Minister would not presume there was a vacancy while a dismissal was being challenged.

The Minister is obviously quite correct when he says that there is a difference between an unfair dismissal situation and disqualification or removal from a board of this kind, that a court might subsequently find that the dismissal was invalid and that that might vitiate decisions taken by the board during that period. I accept that completely. Perhaps amendments Nos. 7 and 8 should be separated, because amendment No. 8 has effectively been answered by the Minister. However, it seems to me that a requirement that the Minister shall appoint somebody is a good idea without specifying the time limit. The Minister's argument affects the question of a time limit within three months but the requirement that he should appoint seems to be a good one. If there is an argument against that, then so be it.

The phrase "shall normally" is not much different to the phrase "may" and it is possible to construe it as being exactly the same thing. "Shall normally" more or less equals "may".

Not in all cases.

Well, I think it does.

To use the expression "shall normally" raises problems of its own because one could get into an argument as to what is normal and what is abnormal. In practice the usual and normal course would obviously be that when a vacancy occurred within a reasonable time that vacancy would be filled. The word "may" must remain to provide for the odd occasion where it might be inappropriate to fill the vacancy.

Coincidentally, that position pertains at this moment in time. As I mentioned earlier, the term of office of the current board finishes in about two to three weeks time and a member of that board resigned about two weeks ago. However, there are about five to six weeks left in the life of that board. I was faced with the decision as to whether it would be appropriate to fill that vacancy for the period. I decided that there was literally no point in doing it. At most there might be one more meeting of the board held and I felt that going through the panoply of appointing somebody for that period was inappropriate. If I had been constrained, however, I would have had to appoint somebody.

It was three months.

That matter is within the discretion of the Minister. If the Minister feels it is worthwhile to fill that vacancy, so be it; but that element of discretion has to be there.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 8 not moved.

I move amendment No. 9:

In page 7, subsection (6), line 25, to delete "such and so many meetings" and substitute "meet at least once a quarter, and as often thereafter".

This amendment simply asks for a rephrasing of the line "The Board shall hold such and so many meetings as may be necessary for the performance of its functions" and requests that it shall "meet at least once a quarter, and as often thereafter" as may be necessary for the performance of its functions. I do not know how often it meets, but it seems that this is a very permissive type of phraseology. Maybe this is normal in legislation, but if it is, it is time it ceased to be normal. A minimum number of meetings should be required during a year, as I would assume is normal for the discharge of functions by most boards.

Senator Lee's amendment would have the effect of requiring the board to hold at least four meetings per annum. While I can appreciate the intentions behind the amendment, I do not think it is necessary. The board met on more than a dozen occasions in 1994 and has already met on several occasions this year. There is the possibility that the amendment could be perceived as setting a norm of four meetings a year for the board. Experience indicates that this would be far below the average number of meetings held by the board each year to date. It can be safely assumed that the board will always hold more than four meetings a year. The amendment, accordingly, is unnecessary and I oppose it.

I support the views expressed by Senator Lee. Having at least four meetings a year is like a quorum. It does not set a precedent that because there is a quorum of at least ten Members, you are suggesting that there should be only ten Members in the Seanad. I am not sure if that number is the quorum for this House.

It is twelve.

It seems that the Minister's argument does not stand up on that and I urge him to consider accepting the amendment.

I did not know how often the board met and, if I had, I might not have included this amendment. At the same time it seems that the phraseology, as it stands, is far too permissive. I do not see any danger whatever of it being taken as a possible norm by the relevant people involved because they will know how much business there is to conduct. If they were to interpret it as permitting them to hold only four meetings a year they would be utterly irresponsible and not be the sort of people the Minister would have ever dreamed of appointing to the board. There is no ideological intent in this, but as a basis of good administrative practice there should be a specification of a minimum number of meetings without any implication that this is the norm and that it shall be held. I cannot see any problem involved in that.

I support Senator Lee. When we have problems, particularly with State agencies and companies, we then discover that they had not been performing their function correctly. To enshrine in law that the board should have its meetings as often as it thinks necessary for conducting its duty without specifying a minimum number would leave it open to have one good board meeting every week or month and a less enthusiastic board deciding that an annual general meeting is as much as it needs to perform its function. We should stipulate in law that there would be a minimum of quarterly meetings. Obviously, it is fine if the board decides to meet more frequently.

What we are experiencing here is a cultural phenomenon. When an amendment is proposed to a piece of legislation the people who wrote the legislation get the idea that they have to defend it through thick and thin. I listened to the reasoned argument put forward by Senator Lee. In his response to it, the Minister made it clear that it would not impact negatively on the way the board might do its business. The Senator, however, put forward substantial reasons for conceding to him, that his amendment would give a protection against any mischievous attempt to defer holding a meeting or dealing with an unpopular piece of business. If there was such a piece of business that the board needed to deal with and it was required to meet at a minimum once a quarter, at least one could be assured that it would meet, that the business could be dealt with and that nobody could interfere with it. In that sense it is a protection.

Even if the Minister does not fully agree with the points made to him today, they are the views of the Members of the House on how this Bill might be improved. Seeing that the Minister has outlined to the House that this amendment does not in any way prevent the positive operation of this legislation, could he not accept it at this point?

This agency appears to have a good record, but I have always believed that it is a good idea to get certain items into legislation virtually automatically. It seems to me that when we are establishing boards like this it is a good thing to put in a minimum requirement of, for example, four meetings. There are other agencies operating in quite sensitive areas where there was clearly a requirement for them to meet and they simply have not. The national drugs co-ordinating committee did not meet at all last year; it met only twice the year before. We were told in this House last night that we were in the middle of a drugs crisis, and this committee has not met at all this year. Whatever about this particular board and its apparently admirable performance, it should as a matter of course go into legislation that these sort of bodies, when appointed, should have a minimum number of meetings.

I say this because, for example, I was involved in pioneering the inclusion of sexual orientation clauses into legislation. In the beginning we had a battle and there was a lot of resistance. Now, virtually automatically, these clauses go into legislation. There should be the same virtual automatic inclusion of a minimum number of meetings. It does not seem to me to prejudice the number of meetings. I am not absolutely convinced that if one sets this target, people will say "We have had our four meetings. That is fine. We need not do anything for the next year." My experience of boards — I am a member of a number of them — is, unfortunately, precisely the reverse. There are people around who have an appetite for board meetings and are continually trying to get them going behind my back, even when I am chairman of the board.

I want to remind Senators that it is almost 1 p.m. and the House agreed to sos at that time.

Senator Norris is right. There is no certainty that if one says there should be at least four meetings the board members will necessarily set that as a target, but there is always the possibility they might.

As a Minister producing legislation and moving it through both Houses, I would like to think that I keep as open a mind as possible about amendments that may be tabled, particularly by Opposition Members. I felt strongly about that when I was in Opposition in the Dáil for many years and complained about Ministers' reactions in the same way, quite bitterly on occasion. I am open, where it is appropriate, to accept an amendment. In this case I again point out to Senators that this board — this Bill is only dealing with this board — met twelve times in 1994. It has already met four times this year and it is only the beginning of April.

On balance, the amendment is probably unnecessary. However, if Senators feel strongly about it, I certainly will look at the particular wording of the amendment for Report Stage. The framing may need some adjustment. I will have a rethink on it. The argument might have more force if the history of the Legal Aid Board was such that it was dilatory in holding meetings or was holding a perfunctory number of meetings over the years. If it had that kind of record, obviously the argument for the amendment would be much stronger. Nonetheless, if Senators feel strongly about it, I will certainly have another look at the wording.

I am grateful to the Minister for responding in that manner. Obviously, this is not a reflection on the Legal Aid Board. I simply believe that in all legislation there should be a requirement for a minimum number of meetings, without reference to or any inference about the performance of the board as such. I accept what the Minister said and the spirit in which he says it. I hope he will be able to come back with some indication of what a minimum ought to be in light of the realities of the board, with which he is familiar. May I just, on a point of information, point out that I am not an Opposition Member? If I were, I would be speaking very differently this morning.

Acting Chairman

Point taken.

I thought the Senator was doing a fine job as it was.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sitting suspended at 1 p.m. and resumed at 2 p.m.

Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 are related and may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 7, subsection (8), line 29, after "5", to insert "of whom not less than 2 shall be men, and not less than shall be women,".

The amendment is an attempt to ensure that gender balance operates in practice as well as in principle. If a quorum does not specify gender balance, there is no guarantee as such that it will operate in practice. The effect of the amendment is that the quorum for a meeting of the board shall be five, of whom not less than two shall be men and not less than two shall be women. This is in the spirit of the Bill and is an attempt to ensure that the spirit is implemented in practice when the board meets.

In practice it may be that the board meets regularly and that the majority of members who attend are equally representative of both genders. However, it would help focus the mind of the board on the importance of gender balance in all circumstances if this was contained in the legislation. I am interested in the Minister's response to this proposition.

Section 4 (8) provides that the quorum for a meeting of the board shall be at least five, or such other number as the board may decide. Senator Lee's amendment suggests that the quorum for a meeting of the board should be gender balanced. I am all in favour of gender balance and I have provided for such in the overall membership of the board. However, it seems to me that to insist in the Bill on a gender balance for all meetings of the board is to invite difficulty. It could result in meetings being held which would have to be abandoned because of the absence of a gender balance. It may be that the board itself can arrange its affairs in a way which would ensure as far as possible that a gender balance exists at meetings. However, to make it mandatory for meetings could well be counterproductive and totally inefficient.

If the board meets as one assumes it will meet — for example, with a majority of members present most of the time — it is by no means unreasonable to expect to have two representatives from each gender present. Otherwise, it would be a very unbalanced board and contrary in practice to the intention of gender balance.

I take the point that a problem might arise from time to time. However, there should be no difficulty in a board of this size arranging that two of a total of 12 or 13 should be present from both genders. If it is functioning regularly — for example, meeting once a month — I find it difficult to envisage that it could be so focused on its activities that it cannot arrange this. If it does not have representation of that type, the principle underlying it will be violated. It may be acceptable if it happened once or twice. However, if it were to happen on a regular basis and lead to the gross inconveniences and inefficiencies to which the Minister referred, it would be completely contrary to the spirit of the Minister's own principle.

It is seldom that I differ from my colleague, Senator Lee, but I beg to differ on this occasion. While the amendment is very worthy, it would establish a precedent for almost every quorum. If this argument was accepted it would establish quorum rules for every Oireachtas committee and certainly for the House itself. We would be establishing a standard in legislation which we would be expected to follow for every other quorum. On that basis I find it difficult to support that all quorums in the future should have a gender balance. Given that there are 12 or 13 members, it is probably sufficient for the board itself to have a gender balance.

I am also reluctant to differ from Senator Lee, but I agree with Senator Quinn. If the necessity for gender balance is enshrined in law, as proposed by the Minister, it encourages a hands off approach where people are told to get on with their business. If the men cannot get themselves to the meetings, that is their problem. However, on the other hand, I should probably say mea culpa. I am the only woman member of a particular committee and I have been unable to attend meetings for several months due to the work of the House. This committee has worked away steadily and produced its report.

I am reluctant to disagree with Senator Lee, but we should establish in law the basic principle of equality and gender balance on boards and then tell people to act as mature adults. They should be told to get themselves to their meetings; but if they cannot make it, the meeting will proceed anyway if a quorum is present.

Senator Lee, you seem to be slightly outnumbered.

That would not be an unusual experience. Loath though I am to disagree with Senator Quinn and Senator McGennis, I wish to explore the matter a little further. Given that the activity of the board affects or can affect all citizens, the argument for a reasonable gender balance on the board is not primarily one of principle. It is highly desirable therefore that the board has representatives who can speak with special authority on the implications for the gender with which they are most familiar. It also derives from a principle affecting the board itself. As far as the Seanad is concerned, for better or for worse the principle of gender balance has not yet entered the way in which we organise our affairs.

The women are holding their own.

The question of a quorum at subcommittee level does not affect us. I would like to see what happens in practice on boards where the clientele consists of substantial numbers of both. That is a different issue from that of gender balance in principle. If the board is organising its affairs in a mature and, rational manner, as Senator McGennis suggests and which doubtless is the case, no inconvenience is imposed on it by the quorum. It is only if it is not doing so that inconvenience is imposed, and if it is not doing so inconvenience ought to be imposed. I realise I am completely outnumbered on all sides, but I will float that suggestion, if not accepted now, at least as a basis for further contributions to discussion of gender balance in our society.

Is the amendment being pressed?

I do not see the Minister jumping to support me.

My experience puts me in sympathy with Senator Lee. It may be difficult to put gender balance and a quorum into the Bill. I am involved in community development and when community meetings are called one tends to find few women, although they are invited.

Very few men.

They find it difficult to go.

Not at all; most committees are dominated by men.

That is my experience.

That is not the case.

I live in rural Ireland.

I find that is the case in community development. I go to a lot of such meetings and women find it difficult to go. Whether that is due to the time of the meetings or their interests, they find it difficult to attend. I am in sympathy with Senator Lee on the basis of my experience——

When will the revolution begin.

——but the Minister may find it impossible to legislate for it and it might make it impossible for the board to operate at times. The desirability of having gender balance at all meetings should be accepted.

We were in front until your interruption, Senator Cotter.

I have sympathy with Senator Lee's proposal but it would be difficult to enforce because, unfortunately, people may find it difficult at the last minute to attend certain meetings.

I take exception to what Senator Cotter has said. Our President, no less, noticed that the vast majority of community involvement in this country is by women. If women are not represented in equal proportion in the Oireachtas, throughout the country they are involved with politics and they are to the fore in community organisations. I would be shocked to think that what Senator Cotter said would go out as the view of this House.

The wrong impression has been given of what I said. Women are involved in committees, but I am talking generally about community meetings. I attend many such meetings where I live; 60 people may attend a meeting and only six are women.

That was probably a Fine Gael meeting.

No, a community meeting; Fine Gael represents the community.

Fine Gael had women involved before Fianna Fáil ever thought of it.

It is a problem. I have being trying to find out why that is: it may well be the timing of the meetings or the responsibilities people have within families. All those elements militate against women having a full involvement as a community group.

Women do not have wives.

Some do.

Of the small number of women who tend to be present a large proportion end up on the committees. I do not want to give the impression that women are not involved, but that their voice is not allowed to be heard, in my part of the country at least, as much as I would like. It has nothing to do with their activity on committees as they are active in that regard.

I am grateful to Senator Cotter for his unexpected support from an unanticipated angle.

The Cork connection.

Although I will withdraw the amendment in deference to the reservations expressed by a number of people from different perspectives, I am serious about the underlying principle. It seems extraordinary that there shall be at least five women and at least five men on the board, yet in practice it is contemplated that it would be impossible for two of either to turn up in a regular way. I withdraw the amendment but under ideological protest.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 11 not moved.
Section 4, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 5.

Amendments Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 17 are alternatives to amendment No. 12, and amendment No. 45 is related and all may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 8, lines 16 to 19, to delete subsection (1) and substitute the following new subsection:

"(1) The principal functions of the Board shall be to provide any legal service that may be provided by a legal practitioner as well as education, research, advice and information in and about the law.".

As it reads the scope of the Bill is a little too narrow. I and others would like to see a broader vision of legal aid, in particular the inclusion of an educational element so that people may be educated about their rights under the law which would increase accessibility. There is also the question of research. It may be argued that this is the role of the Law Reform Commission. I see the Civil Legal Aid Board and the Law Reform Commission as complementary in this because, for all the great respect I have for the Law Reform Commission, it is largely academic, whereas this body could operate from a more day to day perspective.

In principle I support Senator Norris's proposal. It is important that people who do not have knowledge of the law or of their civil rights should be informed and educated of them. I raised this point on Second Stage. In rural areas we do not have all the civil legal aid services and it is of primary importance to make the aid available. In my town people do not have legal aid readily available to them and they have the barrier of travelling 15 or 20 miles to obtain the aid. Even if one discusses it with them and informs them it is available, they do not avail of it because of the travel barrier. In addition, if they do not have immediate experience of the law, that is also a barrier.

The primary purpose should be to give the legal aid service. An important secondary aspect should be the educational aspects. If people do not know what they are entitled to, how can they obtain their rights? We should support this principle. I would ask the Minister the position with regard to the board engaging in educational and research functions. Is the board precluded from engaging in education, research and other worthy activities if they are not included in the Bill?

I have tabled a similar amendment. This amendment is particularly important. If the Minister accepts it, it will decide the scope of the service which the Civil Legal Aid Board can provide. When I spoke on Second Stage I quoted from an article in The Irish Times which stated: “Two different views exist as to the proper function of a civil legal aid scheme. In one view, civil legal aid is primarily about assisting individuals to litigate their claims. [That is what this Bill will achieve, but no more]... The other view, however, sees civil legal aid as primarily concerned with assisting disadvantaged individuals and communities and moreover engaging in activities other than litigation.” That is a vital part of this Bill. It must do more than simply assist individuals to litigate their claims. During the course of the debate I cited the Coolock Community Law Centre and other examples.

If we restrict the activities of the board to what is in the Bill, we will simply assist people to litigate their claims, but no more. I do not believe that is what the Minister would have hoped for by placing the Civil Legal Aid Board on a statutory footing. We do not simply want to transplant what was there before to a legal basis, but to do no more. We are not suggesting that the Civil Legal Aid Board should embark immediately on education and research activities, but that is the direction which the board should take along with delivering a good service efficiently, effectively and at reasonable cost to the users and the taxpayer who will fund it.

Senator Neville made the case that the panel system will help individuals in remote communities to gain access to civil legal aid service. However, some people do not know whether they have a right or are entitled to claim. Often people do not realise that they have a serious case to have recourse to the law. If we do not enshrine these other activities in the Bill, it will be too narrow. It will be a minimalist approach to providing civil legal aid.

I hope the Minister will be sympathetic to the case being made to broaden the functions of the board. I refer in particular to education. One could compare the objective of this amendment to preventative medicine. It seems that the medical field is making sure that people do not get ill in the first place because they know how to behave at the early stages. This could be crucial to the meaning of this Bill. If the functions of the board are broadened to include education, in particular, as well as research, advice and information, it would reduce the amount of legal activities which the board would otherwise handle.

Senator Norris referred to the Law Reform Commission, which may be regarded as a little more academic. However, this board has a more hands on approach in that it is closer to its clients and is better able to influence them so as to avoid legal action in the first place. The Coolock Community Law Centre and FLAC give a lot of advice on family law, but also on debt. If people were educated about and advised on debt, fewer legal entanglements would occur.

This should be seriously considered, in particular in regard to rights. Civil rights are not always known by those who have problems in this area. The main objective of this amendment is to broaden the functions of the board to include education and advice and information, which would depend on research. It is a worthwhile amendment.

I support what has been said by other speakers on this amendment. What is proposed is very much in the spirit of what I propose. This is the core of the Bill and it is where the philosophy and ethos are concentrated. The direction which one takes here determines the ideology of the Bill. It seems that any pretence at equal citizenship in this country depends on equal access to knowledge. Unless there is equal access to knowledge or that possibility, it is simply self-delusionary to talk about democracy in the fullest sense. This is a major opportunity for a statutory board to make a significant contribution on an accumulative basis through systematic activity towards broadening the basis of understanding of what are essential democratic rights for the substantial proportion of the people who do not know or understand what they are entitled to.

I am not speaking from a rights perspective; I do not believe in rights without responsibilities. However, I believe it is impossible to have a responsible citizenry unless every effort is made to counter the effects of the inheritance and environment of those who have grown up in deprived areas. This Bill should make specific provision for that. It is in accordance with the programme for A Government of Renewal where citizen's access to rights and entitlements is identified as one of the objectives of Government policy.

I believe that in our schools, for example, civics modules should contain information about the legal system, in particular aspects of it which are likely to be of relevance to most people. In areas of deprivation, where a substantial majority of schoolchildren come from families which would qualify for this, specific provision should be made to introduce them at that age to familiarity with this possibility, because it is an ongoing educational activity.

When the Heritage Bill passed through the House last week, the Minister, who did not originally envisage an educational function in the Bill, became enthusiastic about this possibility. I believe that should be explicitly included in this Bill. As Senator Quinn and others said, it is essential. Without it, much of this remains in the realm of rhetoric, depending on the goodwill of the individual Minister — something that we have at present, but we must not delude ourselves that that will continue to be the case indefinitely. I strongly support this amendment.

Section 6 provides for incidental or consequential functions which the Minister may at his discretion assign to this Act. I included the words "in particular, educational functions". The Minister may have something like this in mind. If he has, it ought to be included in the substance of the Bill and not left to Ministerial order, where one is depending on the goodwill of the individual Minister.

I support the amendment. Equality of access to justice requires that all members of society are aware of their rights and obligations. At present the Legal Aid Board does not have a duty to provide education and information on the legal rights of citizens. The Pringle report attached considerable importance to the requirement that the board should have an education function and should publicise the availability of the legal aid scheme, because research showed that people in poor financial services were unaware of the board's existence or did not know what it involved. The report recognised that programmes of education on legal rights were most important in identifying legal needs.

The board is in a particularly good position to make recommendations on law reform and to carry out research because it is dealing with people in society with a great deal of needs and who look to it to provide for these needs. As was said on Second Stage, reform of areas of law which cause problems for people may actually reduce the amount of litigation taken by them. We should be very aware of this and support any measures which encourage this.

This amendment is very important. As Senator McGennis said, if we do not introduce changes to the Bill to improve it, we will only be putting the existing system on a statutory basis. We are all aware of the Minister's concerns and congratulate him for what he has done and the amount of funding he has provided for this area. I urge him to consider this amendment and to make a good Bill a good deal better.

It is very interesting that every Member who spoke, from the Independent, Opposition and Government benches, supported the principle of these amendments. This is very telling and I am sure that the Minister would be personally sympathetic, whatever response he may give, to this because he is very humane. This kind of educational outreach would, as Senator Quinn indicated, allow people to intervene before matters became critical in a legal sense and perhaps avoid litigation altogether, which would be very good.

The Bill does not preclude the board from engaging in educational research but it certainly does not encourage or oblige the board to do so. I would like to see an obligation, even if it was only a moral one, placed on the board to reach out in this area. I believe this can be done without any great additional expenditure because resources could be redeployed. Once they were so redeployed, they would be seen to be so efficient that the Government would be, if not enthusiastic, at least willing, to make additional resources available for this area.

With regard to education, one of the aims of any publicly funded legal service should be to let people know what their rights are. One cannot exercise rights in the absence of the knowledge that one possesses those rights. The board could do this in a number of ways, such as schools' programmes, training sessions and the media. It should inform people of what they are entitled and allow them to enforce their own rights or use the services of welfare rights workers who have been trained specifically by the legal service.

As far as law reform and research is concerned, the present Legal Aid Board, even before this Bill is passed, is in an ideal position to study the impact of social legislation on the ground. A reform of laws which cause problems could well be seen as a much more efficient way to deal with many people's problems rather than litigation. Our catch cry should be legislation in this instance rather than litigation further down the line.

A position paper on the Bill prepared for me by the Free Legal Advice Centres asks a series of questions which relate very directly to this area. In testing the Bill we could apply them to a certain extent, especially in the area covered by the amendment, to test whether the Bill works in the way this House clearly appears to wish it to work.

These questions are as follows: is the present scheme accessible to members of the travelling community? Is it accessible to somebody in a mental institution? Will community groups be able to use it? Will people learn from it what their rights are? Will they be able to learn how to represent themselves or others at a social welfare tribunal? Will the new service have links with universities so that research can be carried out into the effects of law? Will social welfare claimants whose payments have been cut off be able to get advice as to what they can do so they can represent themselves or be directed to some welfare group who can advise them? Will the new board be in a position to hear from the people who use the service what they think of it — in other words, to get feedback from consumers?

If the Minister accepts either of these amendments or says he accepts their principle and will introduce an amendment on Report Stage — out of vanity Senator Lee and I would much prefer if one of our amendments was chosen — those questions will be satisfactorily answered and the Bill will be strengthened in the way we collectively in this House clearly wish it to be.

Section 5 sets out the principal functions of the Legal Aid Board as being to provide, within its resources, legal aid and advice in civil cases to persons who satisfy the requirements of the Bill.

The amendments proposed by Senator Norris would make education, research, advice and information a principal function of the Legal Aid Board, would require the board to make arrangements for the dissemination of information in relation to the law and legal services and would seem to have the effect of extending legal aid to matters which are for the time being excluded from legal aid by section 10 (28).

On the issues of education, information and research, I could not accept an amendment which would result in such functions being deemed principal functions of the Legal Aid Board. While I accept that the board has a role to play in the area of education and information and that in the normal course of its operation it must be required to undertake research as appropriate, the principal function of the board must, as the Bill provides, be the provision of legal aid and advice in civil matters to persons of insufficient means. To accord any other matter an equal or greater priority would result in limited resources being diverted from what must be the principal function of the board, namely, that of providing legal aid and advice.

The board can best assure access to justice by addressing the priority of providing legal aid and advice to those most in need in society. As I indicated on Second Stage, over 90 per cent of legal aid cases relate to family law. I think Senators will agree that this is and should continue to be our number one priority.

The Pringle committee, whose report led to the establishment of the scheme of civil legal aid and advice, envisaged a role for the board by way of the supply of legal information to the public. However, at the time of reporting in 1977, the committee envisaged that law centres would be concerned principally with the provision of legal advice rather than legal aid. The practical experience of the operation of the scheme in the intervening 18 years has shown the opposite to be the case. Law centres spend by far the greater proportion of their time providing legal aid to members of the public for the purpose of proceedings before the courts.

As I indicated in my reply to the Second Stage debate, the National Social Services Board, which was set up in 1984, is a resource agency whose aim is to inform and empower individual citizens and communities by ensuring they are aware of all their civil and social rights and entitlements and of the services which exist to support them. At the time that the Pringle committee reported the NSSB did not exist, and in many respects the information and education role, which the committee envisaged would be undertaken by the Legal Aid Board's law centres, is today being provided through the citizen information centres registered with the NSSB. At present there are a total of 82 citizen information centres nationwide registered with the NSSB which receive an annual grant from the Department of Health in excess of £1.2 million.

It might be of interest to Senators to know that in recent years a review was carried out by the legal aid efficiency scrutiny team in the UK into the role which the legal aid service should play in the provision of information. It recommended that the first port of call for citizens seeking information and advice in relation to their civil and social rights and entitlements should normally not be a solicitor employed by the Legal Aid Board but rather an advice agency such as a citizens advice or information bureau. I share this view.

Undoubtedly, there is a role for the Legal Aid Board in the provision of information. It is already fulfilling that role by way of information leaflets about the services it provides and the centres from which it operates. It also produces an annual report on its activities and I understand that staff of the board engage in information programmes on behalf of the board as time permits. It may safely be assumed that, in the context of the present development of the service, it will continue to fulfil its role in the dissemination of information.

There is nothing in the Bill which precludes the board from providing information to individuals or organisations where appropriate. On the contrary, section 6 of the Bill provides that the Minister may by order assign to the board such additional functions as are considered incidental to or consequential on the functions assigned to it under the Bill. Section 37 of the Bill provides that the Minister may by regulation make provision for such matters. I am satisfied that the board can be relied upon to provide the necessary information to the public. If the need arises, it will be possible under the Bill as it stands to make ministerial orders or regulations to deal with the matter.

As I have said, the amendment could also have the effect of including matters otherwise excluded under section 28 of the Bill. This section precludes the board from granting legal aid in respect of proceedings relating to what are termed designated proceedings. These designated proceedings relate to matters which are at present excluded from the scheme of legal aid and advice, such as defamation and conveyancing other than conveyancing which arises out of a matrimonial dispute. However, in relation to such proceedings the provisions of section 28 (11) provide for a very significant and positive departure from the existing scheme. Under subsection (11) the Minister may by order deem any of those matters as no longer being designated.

I think that Senators will agree that the present policy of directing funds to those cases where funds are most needed, to increase the number of law centres, to provide proper staffing levels and then to assess whether the Exchequer, having regard to the various priorities, should extend funding to the board for all cases is the correct one. With regret, therefore, I must oppose these amendments.

I understand that the Minister's feeling is that the principal functions of the board shall be to provide the legal service and so on. If the amendment was altered to read "and in addition should engage in the provision of education, research, advice and information in and about the law" would that meet the Minister's reservations?

I am disappointed by what the Minister said because, as was said by previous speakers, we all regard this matter of education and information as most important. I would be quite willing to agree to Senator Norris' proposal to remove the words "principal functions".

I did not realise that amendment No. 45, which is my name, was being discussed with these amendments. It implements the Law Reform Commission's recommendation that free legal aid should be available in defamation cases. Under the Constitution, the State is obliged to vindicate the good name of citizens. I would have thought that a statutory provision which specifically denies the aid of the State to persons whose good name has been impugned would be inconsistent with the Constitution. Could the Minister explain how he can prohibit free legal aid for people who have been defamed?

I wish to query the grouping of amendment No. 45 with these other amendments because I would not have thought that it was relevant to them. I was going to make a point similar to that made by Senator Norris — perhaps the wording of the amendment is the cause of problem. I did not intend that the principal function of the board would be education. However, while the board's primary function will be to provide legal services, it should also engage in education, research, advice and information.

Could the Minister change the amendment in order to incorporate what we are trying to achieve? We are not suggesting that the scarce resources which are available to assist people to bring cases to court should be dispersed in any other direction. However, the definition in the Bill appears to be too narrow to achieve the objective of the amendment.

FLAC's submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Women's Rights last year stated, talking about violence against women: "For there to be effective access to justice, legal services must include education to counter this lack of knowledge". That is a very basic premise from which we must start. If people do not have any knowledge they will have very little access to justice. It has to be incorporated into this legislation, not as the principal function but as one of the functions of the board.

I support what Senator McGennis said. I understand and am sympathetic to the Minister's view. It is nobody's objective to make this a principal function; it is very much a secondary function. I urge the Minister to consider accepting the tone of Senator Norris' suggestion. I spoke about preventative medicine and if one of the Minister's reasons for being loath to go along this route is cost, the whole issue of preventative litigation is a cost saving effort. The idea is that educating people reduces the amount of litigation. Therefore, a case made on the grounds of cost does not stand up. I agree entirely with Senator Norris' proposal that this be regarded as a secondary function. I do not think that it was ever the intention that it should be regarded as a principal function. If that was taken into account, perhaps the Minister would change his mind.

Amendment No. 13 does not provide for it being a principal function of the board. I think that if Senator Lee's amendment was adopted it would satisfy all our requirements.

I am admiring the prescience of my amendment. I take the point which was made by the other Senators who are requesting the Minister to reconsider the full rigour of his position. Obviously, nobody wants to inhibit the effectiveness of the board in dealing with individual cases, which is what I was trying to get at in dividing up the functions of the board. I retained the phrase "provide within the board's resources and subject to the other provisions of this Act" which was not included in the earlier amendment. That would leave the distribution of its resources at the board's discretion.

However, it is important for an educational function to be incorporated as one of the board's objectives, not necessarily as its principal function. It is up to the board to decide what its range of priorities ought to be in any given context. However, this measure would oblige it to keep in mind, on a statutory basis, the importance of devoting such resources as it felt it could spare to the education dimension. This is what I was attempting to incorporate in dividing the objectives into (a) and (b). If one were to retain the phraseology, "within the Board's resources", and then itemise in terms of functions, this would give the board the flexibility which is doubtless desirable, but at the same time would make specific commitment to the education dimension of its work.

I have not heard anything said which would cause me to revise my opinion about the central importance of this matter in fostering a fully functioning, and not simply a rhetorical, democracy in this country. While other bodies may have their roles to play in this — there may be citizens' advice bureaux and so on — when the opportunity is offered in legislation of this kind, an opportunity which will not recur for years, there is no reason there should not be some specific commitment incorporated in the legislation also.

I support Senator Quinn's view. This would be money well spent and objecting to amending the legislation on the grounds that it would lead to extra or excessive cost does not stand up. As legislators, we are charged with the distribution of scarce resources. The resources of the State are finite and we cannot seek, ad infinitum, this, that and the other which adds extra cost. However, in this case the money invested would yield positive economic reward.

We have dealt with legislation in the House on a recurring basis where it could be suggested that if proper educational facilities and advice were made available, ensuring problems would not arise. This proposal is a classic example of this. It would be to the advantage of the Exchequer to invest in this type of activity. Amendment No. 13 covers the point in terms of the principal and other functions of the board, and the objection would not apply to this amendment. Nevertheless, I urge the Minister to consider carefully the suggestions made regarding this issue.

Since I first attended the House, in almost all cases Bills which were initiated in the Seanad were significantly amended in this House, because there was an acceptance on the part of the Government, of whatever complexion, to accept suggestions made here. For this reason I ask the Minister to reconsider his earlier refusal to entertain these amendments.

The Minister said that the principal function of the board must be to ensure that civil legal aid is available; this is also my objective. However, the Minister has also advised that education, advice and research are not excluded from the work of the board and he is in a position to introduce an order to make it more directly the responsibility of the board if he so wishes.

Despite the large increase obtained for the board over the past two years, there is a limited amount of funding available, and at the level at which it is granted at present it must be applied in such a way which will ensure that civil legal aid is made available to all citizens who are in need of it. I do not wish to under-estimate the need for education and research; it is vital but, as a first principal, civil legal aid must be made available to all who are in need of it. Following that, the Minister will, at a later stage and under the provisions of the Bill, direct the board to get involved in the areas of concern to the Senators.

Hopefully the Minister will accept the amendments. There may be defects in them; it appears that the amendment in the name of Senator Lee will command the greatest degree of support because it does not have the difficulty regarding the principal functions of the board. I would be happy to accept a revision of the amendment in my name. Hopefully, the Minister is prepared to be flexible with regard to this matter and perhaps he will consider it with the objective of introducing an amendment on Report Stage.

Doubtless the National Social Services Board does good work, as do the citizens' advice bureaux. However, both are broadly based organs and the value of the Legal Aid Board, the advice centres, etc. would be principally that they are specifically focused and engaged in the area of their special expertise.

As regards education and research, I am not aware of any great programme of research, conducted, carried out or published by the National Social Services Board, and in saying this I may be doing it an injustice which I do not intend. Perhaps there is such a programme, but in the legal area I am not aware of this board having a programme of research, conducting such research and publishing its results. Its role in this area appears to be minimal. There are areas where, for reasons I have already indicated, the board and its centres could engage in productive research which would help us to frame further legislation in the future.

Returning to the point made by Senator Neville, which sums up the nub of what we are about in this Bill, it is true that the resources of the Legal Aid Board have been substantially increased over the past two years. However, whatever the resources of the board may be at any one time, they are finite. One can give as many additional tasks or functions to the board as one wishes, but the resources available to the board each year remain finite and it must operate within the resources at its disposal in any given year. One can direct the board to undertake seminars around the country or to divert some of its lawyers to undertake legal research; these are possibilities, but the board would still have to operate within the confines of the resources — albeit increased resources — provided to it.

The board has a demanding and necessary job to undertake. There are ever increasing demands for its services and personnel which are ever more difficult to meet. When I took responsibility for the board, it was not unusual to have waiting lists of 12 and 14 months to obtain legal aid and advice. Happily, these waiting lists have been greatly reduced in most of the law centres, although even now there are waiting lists and delays at some law centres even with the substantially increased resources at the disposal of the board.

The board processes thousands of cases every year and all its time, energy and personnel is directed towards this end. Senator Lee mentioned that if we did not have this education function we would be in the realm of rhetoric on what we are doing here. With respect, the work of the Legal Aid Board is not rhetoric; it is very real and it impacts on the needs and the lives of thousands of people who need it most. There is no rhetoric about it; it is very practical, down to earth work and every resource available to the board is needed.

As regards dissemination of information and advice, the Civil Legal Aid Board, the law centres and solicitors do this all the time. People go to them for that purpose. The title of the service suggests legal aid and advice. The people who avail of this service get first class professional legal advice on matters pertaining to them in the legal and social welfare area. Advice is given on social welfare issues, although tribunal representation is not admissible at present. However, advice in connection with social welfare law is obtainable and is sought and freely given. Such information is not the subject matter of these amendments because that is already given. One of the primary functions is to give legal advice and people know this. There are still waiting lists and there is no shortage of demand for those services and advice. They are not short of business.

No prohibition is placed on the board and I have no objection to it or to the law centres — I encourage them if personnel, time or money are available — doing what they can. For example, during my visits to the law centres around the country, I saw — they probably exist in all of them, although I did not see them in each one — informative leaflets and documentation on different subjects. I have no intention of prohibiting the Civil Legal Aid Board, the law centres or solicitors in charge of them from becoming involved in disseminatory and informatory work by using leaflets or whatever means and resources are at their disposal, provided it does not inhibit the basic objective of solicitors being available to give advice and to represent people in court.

Some Senators purported to draw a comparison between preventative medicine and the giving of such information. That is not a valid analogy. Cases, whether for a barring order, maintenance or separation, are not easily dealt with on a preventative basis; an order is required. It is not comparable to preventative medicine.

I require the Bill to clarify that the principal objective of the board is to provide legal aid and advice. Advice is information, which Senators require, and aid is representation in court, which is required and used by people. There is no spare capacity, but I hope to increase it in the future.

The board or the law centres will have my blessing in the provision of information. We do not need to amend this legislation in order to do that. However, Senators are concerned about it. I am prepared to look at the wording again to see if a subsidiary reference to information could be included in the legislation. Senators must agree that the increased resources are being well used. A professional and dedicated service is provided. I met the people who work in the law centres and I was overwhelmingly impressed by their dedication, quality and calibre. They are extraordinarily dedicated and they give of themselves beyond the call of duty. They are doing a good job.

Perhaps it was not necessary to introduce this Bill. We could have continued on a non-statutory basis, as the board has operated since it started 15 or 18 years. It would not have been the end of the world to do so, but for many years there have been calls for this scheme to be put on a statutory basis. People know their rights and their position. The resources have been substantially increased and we are now talking about appreciable money, the employment of many people and an important service to the public. I thought it would be appropriate to reflect that in legislation. It goes beyond the non-statutory scheme and that is important. It will be possible to make alterations to it in the future once it has been recorded in statutory form. I ask Senators to bear with me and to understand that great work is being done and that the information is in my mind and that of the board. I ask them to accept that in the spirit in which it is offered.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We have discussed these amendments at length, therefore I ask Senators to be brief.

I will be brief. I would not like someone who reads the record of the Houses of the Oireachtas to think there is opposition to this Bill and that the status quo should be maintained. We are charged to examine the Bill; that is what Committee Stage is about. I make no apology to the Minister for suggesting amendments or improvements to the Bill.

I challenge the matter of advice. Sections 25 and 26 of the Bill are restricted in terms of what they regard as legal advice and who is eligible for that advice. We are proposing something broader than what is in the amendments before the House.

I welcome the degree of flexibility shown by the Minister in this matter, who said he will look again to see if it is possible to include our views, particularly in the light of our discussion this morning on the regularity of meetings of the board. The Minister felt that perhaps people could be discouraged by the form of words from attending more than four meetings. If language has that kind of emotional and instinctual impact on people, perhaps he would agree that if people can be discouraged from a form of behaviour by a particular form of words in one section of the Bill, he could be encouraged to undertake certain patterns of behaviour by another form of words in another part of the Bill. The Minister said they will have his blessing if they undertake this, as long as they meet what he sees as the principal function——

The Senator wanted four meetings as a minimum; he cannot have it both ways.

I can try.

Of course he can because he is Senator Norris.

I interpreted the instinctual and emotional impact of the language in a different way to the Minister. I felt it would encourage them to attend at least four meetings. I am talking about the impact, not its direction. The Minister felt that the language would have a particular impact, but I disagreed with him as to what that impact would be. It is important that there should be encouragement, if nothing more. I accept fully that the principal function of the Bill should be to service the immediate practical and legal needs of citizens who are entitled. However, there should be a subsidiary function. I also note — I think the Leas-Chathaoirleach is feeling unwell——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I ask for brevity because we have discussed these amendments at length. I assure the Senator I am not unwell.

The Minister only mentioned information, but I hope he included education and research. He has said he is not inimical and that once the board has fulfilled its principal function, as he envisages it, he would give his blessing to and encourage the provision of information. However, he did not go on to mention education and research. I assume that is just an oversight and that the Minister will give equal encouragement to education and research if a satisfactory form of words can be found to be included in this. As a retired teacher, I believe that education is important.

I am sure the Minister would agree that there is in the Legal Aid Board, as constituted at present, a huge body of information and experience. It would be a pity if, for lack of encouragement, information on case histories, the number of prosecutions in certain areas, how they were handled and so forth lay inert and if there was no encouragement, when possible, to process such information into a form that could be useful both in academic research in universities and in assisting us as legislators to refine and target subsequent legislation in these areas.

In light of the degree of movement the Minister has shown, could he indicate to the House that he will look again at this area? Will he see if it is possible to frame a form of words that would be satisfactory to him, that will not interfere with the principal function of the board as he sees it, that will at least go so far as to encourage and give clear blessing to the work of the board in this area and that work will not be confined just to information but that it will also include education and research? I would be satisfied with that.

It might be easier to satisfy Senator Norris than it would be to satisfy me. No Member of this House suggested that the Legal Aid Board or the legal aid centres were short of business. We are well aware that they are anything but short of business. That is not the purpose of the amendment and to make such an observation is to miss the point of the amendment.

Does the Minister honestly believe that every citizen who has a valid case in law is now aware of their rights? If the Minister says that is his view on the matter, I will withdraw my amendment unequivocally. However, I do not believe that to be the case. That is why I have put down the amendment. On a previous occasion when dealing with other legislation the Minister castigated my colleagues — not me, I hasten to add — about opposition for opposition's sake. Since his appointment to office the Minister has stated repeatedly that he would be flexible on issues and that he wishes to produce the best possible legislation. However, his flexibility today is demonstrating itself in the most rigid form I have ever seen. Some of these amendments are worthy of being accepted. It is unworthy of the Minister not to accept them. Perhaps the solution lies in the section regarding the conferral of additional functions. Section 6 states:

The Minister may, by order, assign to the Board such additional functions as the Minister considers to be incidental to or consequential on the functions assigned to it by this Act.

Perhaps the solution would be that the Minister give a commitment that he will assign these functions to the board by order. However, I would not be satisfied with the Minister saying that he will not object to the board undertaking these functions. We want more than that. To leave it to the pleasure or otherwise of a board to take on these functions is not strong enough. The Minister must instruct the board to do so. If the Minister is unhappy with how our amendment is worded, Senator Lee's amendment might be appropriate. The Minister's authority to confer such functions on the board by order is another method.

This section must be amended because it is central, as Senator Lee also said, to what will emerge as our civil legal aid system. It is not enough to say that it will be looked at later with a view to adding these additional functions. We have had a civil legal aid system in place for almost 18 years on a non-statutory basis. Now that it is being put on a statutory basis — and I recognise that resources are a problem — we should look at how we can improve it. I understand the need for it to concentrate on its priority area. However, we must widen the scope slightly.

I can only repeat what I said earlier. The resources of the board are finite. It is easy to put down an amendment directing the board to carry out additional functions beyond what it is doing effectively and to the best of its ability now. That is easily done. However, if resources are taken away from fulfilling the primary function in order to carry out functions that are secondary and tertiary, the primary function suffers and people who need legal aid and legal advice will have to wait longer to get them.

Opposition and Independent Senators have their role, and it is an important role. I listen carefully to and weigh what they. However, I also have responsibilities to the people who rely on this service. That is why I was elected by them. The Government also has responsibilities to them and it must weigh up the key priorities. Perhaps I am being unduly frank about this matter and perhaps that is a fault on my part. However, under no circumstances would I take legal personnel from the employ of the Legal Aid Board and away from the cutting edge work they do helping people in order to put them into the Law Library to engage in legal research. With the present level of resources, I see no role to undertake legal research.

Legal research is an intense, specialised and complex operation. There are other places and people available to carry out such work. If there was an abundance of resources and the primary purpose of the board was being dealt with to the extent that I would wish, I would have no problem about that function. It would be a wonderful ideal that legal research be carried out. However, the resources are not there, despite the increased funding that has been secured for the board in the last couple of years.

With regard to information, on my visits to law centres I have encouraged them in their work on the excellent and simple leaflets they distribute. The most important information that must be disseminated is the fact that the service is available to advise and aid people who need advice and aid on these issues. With regard to educating people about their rights, there could be a community role in that regard. I am happy to continue to encourage the board and law centres at locations throughout the country to do what they can in that area provided they do not thereby detract from their principal objective and from meeting their responsibility to serve the people in the areas in which they are located. That must be their primary function.

If the amendments are withdrawn I am prepared to look at the wording to see if something that will meet those parameters can conveniently be included in this or another section. I cannot, with regret, say more than that. While Senators have their responsibilities, I have mine. They are to ensure that people who need advice can get it, that solicitors and support staff are available to provide such advice, that people who need legal aid can get it and that they can have legal representation in court when they need it so urgently.

After time resources may have increased to the extent that much greater emphasis can be placed on these other areas and no one would be more pleased about that than I. If all that was required to get additional resources for these purposes was to write increased functions into the Bill, I would be the first to do it but it does not work that way, as Senators know. Resources are finite and I appeal to Members to keep that to the forefront of their minds at all times. We must use those resources according to the perceived priorities. I have no doubt the priorities I am enunciating are those by which we must abide.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is amendment No. 12 being pressed?

I have a brief comment because we must take this debate seriously.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We have discussed this at great length and the Minister has replied in great detail.

Yes, but there are still matters of substance to be examined. There is not as great a degree of divergence between the Minister and myself as his last reply indicated. I was not thinking about sending people to the Law Library; my concern was with the process of understanding and evaluation of the experience of the law centres. They publish reports and that is what I am seeking to encourage — making available to the public the result of their experience. That should be an ancillary function, not necessary in competition with other functions.

I thought that would be understood because in introducing the amendment I said I did not see this being in competition with the Law Reform Commission. What is important in this area is the analysis of the experience of the law centres and I hope the Minister will be able to give encouragement to that.

All these amendments are being taken together. I am not sure why the Minister feels compelled to reject amendment No. 15, which provides:

The Board shall make such arrangements as in its opinion are necessary to ensure that information in relation to the law and the legal services provided for in this Act, is adequately disseminated.

How can the Minister possibly disagree with this? Does he want the information inadequately disseminated? Does he feel the board is incapable of making these decisions? Does he feel this is unnecessary? I have not heard a single argument from him to counter the inclusion of this amendment. It would seem absurd to go against the thrust of the Bill to reject an amendment of this nature out of hand when it does not conflict with the intention of the Bill and does not greatly expand its function.

I take Senator Norris's last point; his amendment is of the same spirit as paragraph (b) of my amendment No. 13, which provides that citizens shall be adequately informed and educated by the board, on the basis of its own judgment. Those of us who work with finite budgets in our other activities are well aware of the constraints imposed by resources. We made suggestions about education, information and research and my amendment uses the phraseology "within the Board's resources and subject to the other provisions of the Act"; it was specifically designed to retain the prominence attached to the resources problem.

What one is concerned with when mentioning education is more a statement of philosophical principle than of immediate practice given the current demands and backlogs. Nevertheless when the Bill first comes here it is important to have the philosophy underlying the legislation explicitly included.

I was gratified to hear the Minister say there could be a community role for education in due course, perhaps sooner rather than later. I would like him to influence my response — an invitation to withdraw the amendment, in a sense. In section 6, my amendment No. 17 seeks to insert the phrase "in particular, educational functions". That leaves the provision of such functions entirely to the discretion of the Minister but it tries to insert the philosophy of educational functions into the Bill. Is the Minister prepared to accept that? It does not impose anything on him or his successors if he or they do not wish to follow it up. I will press this amendment to a vote if there is no concession on the educational function. This amendment is in no way binding because he will control the inside track but I would welcome an indication of the Minister's likely response.

All I can do is repeat what I said before. I am prepared to consider that point on Report Stage if the amendment is withdrawn but I am not in a position to give a commitment at the moment.

Could I have a response about amendment No. 15?

With respect, that amendment is drawn in the broadest possible way. Dissemination of information about the law could cover a multitude. The law is a complex, difficult area which students practise and study for years on end. I cannot put a responsibility on the board to ensure information in relation to the law and the legal services is adequately disseminated. It is not an appropriate item to put in an Act of Parliament nor is it an appropriate obligation to put on a board.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is amendment No. 12 being pressed?

I may reintroduce it in some form on Report Stage.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 13 not moved.

I move amendment No. 14:

In page 8, lines 16 to 19, to delete subsection (1) and substitute the following new subsection:

(1) The principal functions of the Board shall be to provide, subject to the provisions of this Act, and to persons who satisfy the requirements of this Act, any legal services such as are provided by practising lawyers; to provide services of an educational nature to such persons and the general public, and to conduct research.".

Amendment put and declared lost.
Amendment No. 15 not moved.
Section 5 agreed to.
SECTION 6.
Government amendment No. 16:
In page 8, line 23, after "may," to insert "with the consent of the Minister for Finance,".
The effect of this amendment is to make the approval of the Minister for Finance a prerequisite to the making of any ministerial order under section 6 assigning additional functions on the board. The consent of the Minister for Finance may be required because of the financial implications of any such order.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment No. 17 not moved.
Section 6, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 7.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Section 7, amendment No. 18. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 are alternatives and all may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 18:

In page 8, subsection (1), line 28, after "necessary" to insert "and all such directives to be published".

We do not differ with the Minister at all in relation to the provision stating that "The board shall, in performing its functions, comply with any directives under this section". However it is important that such directives be published. It is simple; they should be made known.

The purpose of amendment No. 18 is simply to ensure that any policy directives the Minister gives to the board will be made public as a matter of course. Speaking as a former chairman of a State-sponsored body, it is entirely proper that the Minister should have the power to direct the board, but it is vital that any such influence should be completely open and visible so that everybody can be aware of exactly where they stand. I have argued that any State organisation should be in that position, particularly in a case where sensitive issues may be involved. Sensitivity is no reason for secrecy; in fact, the very opposite is the case.

Let me make it quite clear that I am not trying to whittle down in any way the Minister's powers. On the contrary, I am trying to protect the Minister and the board from both rumour and innuendo. There are precedents for this, as far as I know, in other State bodies, RTE in particular springs to mind, and it is an approach which has been proved to work well in the past. We should adopt it in this case. It is not a very major amendment, but it states that wherever the Minister issues directives, they are to be made public and published.

This amendment deals with the issue of openness and accountability, about which there has been much talk, particularly when the Government changed. Like Senator McGennis, I do not challenge the Minister's right to issue directives. However, I say categorically that the public have a right to know the basis for those directives. There are two ways of doing this. One is to enshrine the policy parameters within the Bill. That would be cumbersome. The other is that where the Minister is making a policy decision, the outcome of that policy decision should be available for everyone to see. The preferable way to do this, as it is done in so many other areas of our legislation, would be to publish and be damned, so to speak, but the other is to lay the decision before each House of the Oireachtas.

There is a possibility — and I do not say it about this Minister — that using this section of the Bill the Minister could restrict, for instance, the provision of legal aid in certain circumstances. There is the whole question of the definition of "emergency" and what the Minister could do in respect of that; he could interpret it in a very narrow way. These are some of the concerns that apply to non-publication or to not laying the decision before the Houses of the Oireachtas. We have a right to see these decisions in the Oireachtas. It comes back to this whole question about which the Leader of the Minister's party laid such emphasis, that was openness and transparency. In that respect, the argument in favour of the amendments is incontrovertible.

Amendment No. 19 is very much in the spirit of amendments No. 18 and 20. I endorse what Senators Quinn and Dardis have said. I am prepared to withdraw my own amendment in favour of amendment No. 20, if that is of any assistance. Once again we are faced with a fundamental issue of principle. The more one looks at this Bill, the more one realises that it contains principles about the type of society we want to be, both by commission and by omission. The more I look at the Bill, the more disturbed I become by the thrust behind it. In terms of the basic principles of openness and transparency, words we have heard very frequently recently, it is self-evident that this should become public knowledge by some mechanism. Laying them before the Houses of the Oireachtas is perfectly acceptable and I have great difficulty seeing how there could be any objection to that.

These amendments, which would require that such policy directives be published, are unnecessary. This is because the section as it stands requires the Minister to issue his directives by order. Such orders must, by virtue of section 38 of the Bill, be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and such orders are of course published in Iris Oifigiúil. For that reason the amendments are quite unnecessary.

May I compliment the Minister on his forbearance in waiting to allow us to put our heads in the noose.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments No. 19 and 20 not moved.
Section 7 agreed to.
Section 8 agreed to.
SECTION 9.

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 8, subsection (1), line 37, after "each year", to insert "within a maximum of three months following the end of the reporting year".

I am taking a leaf out of Senator Quinn's book here. He has been very active in trying to ensure that definite periods be put to the length of time the preparation of reports will take and that criteria be established for publication of reports and documents. The amendment is simply trying to include a time limit to the publication of reports.

I am open to correction on this — I may be overlooking something — but the last report of the current board I was able to get my hands on was for 1992. Maybe there is a 1993 publication, but 1992 was the latest one I could put my hands on and that is unacceptable. Even 1993 would at this stage be unacceptable, so this amendment was trying to concentrate minds on the time limits involved in producing reports. That is all that is to it. I am not wedded in any way to the periods mentioned but the principle of a time limit ought to be imposed. This principle ought as a matter of course be included in legislation of this type.

I support Senator Lee's proposal. I repeat what I have said before about the senator in ancient Rome who demanded that Carthage be destroyed: Delenda est Cartago. He continued to say Delenda est Cartago until Carthage was destroyed. I have pleasure in supporting Senator Lee, because we have to continue to ask for time limits on the publication of reports. Every report we are responsible for should be published within a reasonable length of time.

It has been traditional in the past to have no deadline in legislation. I am delighted to say that in all recent legislation concerning State-sponsored bodies and other boards that have been set up, a time limit has been placed on the report. It is necessary to have such time limits. I was unaware that this report had not been published since 1993. At this stage of the year we should have the 1994 report to hand, because three months is quite adequate. We should set, demand and expect this standard from all legislation in future. It comes back to what Senator Dardis said about the formation of this Government — accountability and transparency with some urgency rather than when it is history. Since Senator Lee is a professor of history he will not be pleased to hear history being referred to as less important than immediate news.

History embraces the future as well, Senator Quinn.

In this respect, we should be encouraging news rather than history.

Senator Lee's proposed amendment would have the effect of compelling the Civil Legal Aid Board to submit its annual report for, say, 1995 before the end of March 1996. I agree that reports should generally be made within a reasonable time after the period they purport to cover. However, Senators who have read annual reports of the board will realise that they contain a considerable amount of valuable statistical data as well as the board's audited accounts. Those statistics take some time to compile and the board would not always be in a position to produce all those statistics before the final deadline which Senator Lee is proposing. I am sure that many Senators would agree that the board should be afforded sufficient time to account fully for its activities during the previous year and that it should be in a position to compile and report on statistical and other information.

Senators will note that section 9 is not, in fact, open ended as it requires the board to publish its annual reports within 12 months of the end of the year to which they relate. That time allowed may seem generous, but I am sure the board will on many occasions report well within that time. I would draw the attention of Senator Lee and other Senators to the fact that a careful reading of section 9 shows it is not open ended. It is certainly not within three months but they would be obligated to report within a 12 month period. That is an outside period and I would hope that they would report at the earliest possible time within the succeeding year.

I must urge the Minister on this. The Minister is almost breaking a precedent that has been established in recent times. To the best of my knowledge, almost every Bill that has come through the Oireachtas in the past 12 months has included a date by which the annual report must be made. We have not yet achieved the three months limitation but we have been achieving six months, yet this proposal is an exception. I urge the Minister not to break with something that has now been established. Three months is the time limit we are aiming at, but at this stage Senator Lee would probably accept a period of more than three months. I am speaking on his behalf without any authority.

As I said in my initial remarks, I am not hung up on the specific time period of three months. I would go as far as six months as a normal period, but it is important not to go to the full year. I did not agree earlier that saying "one meeting a quarter" was going to instantly reduce meetings to one a quarter. If you say "within a year", people will feel that they have a year in which to do it.

I take the point that there can be delays in accumulating statistics. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the research service, the assessment of statistics in a manner which would be acceptable to researchers is not actually contained in the reports anyway, as far as I can see, valuable though the raw data is.

If it is not possible in a six month period to arrive at a presentation of the vast bulk of the activities that occurred the previous year, then the report should not be held up for some fugitive piece of data which could be inserted later as an addendum sheet. Publication of the report should not be allowed to linger on for up to a further six months in the hope that the information will become available. A period of 12 months is too long and inevitably becomes internalised as the overall time available to produce the report.

The Minister is right about the need for sufficient time but the question is: what amount of time is sufficient? In the nature of things, if people are granted a year they take a year, rather than six months or three months, even though they are capable of doing it in such a shorter time. From journalistic experience I can say that unless the deadline is there the material is not produced. The greatest way to concentrate the mind is to put a deadline in front of somebody. For that reason I think six months would be a reasonable compromise.

I will consider it between now and Report Stage to see whether the chief executive of the Civil Legal Aid Board has any comment to make about it. I would have thought that if it is produced within the succeeding year that would be reasonable enough. However, I will consider it further.

I have some difficulty with the last reply. The Minister has almost committed himself to saying he thinks a year is all right.

No, he has done the opposite.

Is that a fair interpretation of what the Minister said? Because if that is the case I would press it to a vote. If he sees a reasonable prospect of it being six months, that would be a different matter. Forgive me if I misrepresent you. I thought the Minister virtually said that he thought a year was not too bad.

No, I do not think six months is all right. Three months would be great, but at the same time I am reluctant to put such a time constraint on the Civil Legal Aid Board and the work it has to do in the preparation of the report. The report is not just a financial account; it is a much broader based document than that. The preparation of the statistical information — the importance of which was made much of by Senator Norris — is quite time consuming. So far as the Civil Legal Aid Board is concerned, if the reports were obtainable once a year it would be a major step forward. In the past, years went by before reports were produced, so if we now got them annually it would be a step forward.

I am somewhat cautious about putting an undue time constraint, although I know it is tempting to do so. My feeling is that if we got the report it within the 12 months period, as it is an outside figure, and each 12 months after that, it would not be unreasonable. However, if the Senator wishes, I will consider it further with the board.

May I inquire a little further because I really am uneasy with the situation that is now emerging? It seems that getting the report out 12 months after the end of the year is regarded as quite an achievement. Am I right in saying that the last report I got my hands on was for 1992? Has there been a report since 1992?

The 1992 report was the last one.

I think that puts it up to us.

That is what I meant by saying that having the report within a year would be a step forward.

Precisely. It puts a bit of wind up these people. I do not doubt that they do an excellent job and that they are very busy, but compiling reports is partly a question of mental attitude. If you think you have a year in which to do it, you will take a year to do it. If you are accustomed to having two and a half years, you will take two and a half years to do it. You do not begin compiling statistics at the end of the year because they accumulate during the year. Why can an official of the board not be given the responsibility of collecting the accumulation of data from the beginning of the year? That should be done from the beginning of the relevant year rather than rooting through material at the end of the year. The reports I have seen are not multi-volume reports, they are fairly slim. I do not doubt that there is important and useful information in them which has to be carefully assessed, but two and a half years is too long. If I sent out a student to collect data and told him he had two and a half years to do it, he would think I was not pulling my weight.

The more the Minister tries to calm me, the more disturbed I become about it. It is unreasonable to expect a year to be the anticipated norm for reports of this scale and that we should be happy that it can manage it in that time. It might be understandable if they were researched reports that contained all the information Senator Norris and others were talking about earlier, but they are accumulations of information. They are very worthwhile but are not documents that should take a year to compile.

It is impossible to look back on data that is two years and four months old and say that is the most recent report. On the basis of that information, of which I was not aware up to now, it is essential that the Minister includes a deadline period of at least six months.

I agree that information after two and a half years is absolutely useless. It has no relevance to the current situation. Statistics and information should be compiled as quickly as possible. If the Minister can reduce it to a deadline of a year, he has made an improvement. The Minister has said that he will examine the situation. I have to concur with the view that information, statistics and reports should be completed as quickly as possible to be of value in decision making or in changing, altering or influencing policy. Reports years down the way are useless and are only of academic interest at that stage.

The Minister appeared to indicate to us that on Report Stage he was prepared to consider a shorter period than a year and then seemed to withdraw somewhat from that position. I am unclear as to the Minister's current position. Who actually prepares this report? Is it somebody within the board or are a firm of consultants or PR people hired to compile, edit and write these reports?

I understand the reports are prepared by the headquarters staff of the board. That depends from time to time on availability of staff to do that and also on receiving the necessary information from all the law centres around the country. Obviously, any delay in providing that information will hold up the preparation of the overall account.

I would not agree that the report loses its value if it is produced within a year. It would be very valuable to receive them within the year and, having regard to the history of the Civil Legal Aid Board, to get them within that period would be an appreciable and substantial improvement on what has pertained until now. As has been said, the last report was produced in 1992 and it is now mid-1995. To get it done within the year would be a huge improvement on the present situation and will require some rejigging of resources at head office level. It would not have been possible to get it within the year had it not been for the additional staff available at head office, as elsewhere.

However, I cannot accept the amendment as it stands. If it is withdrawn, I will ask my officials to consult with the Civil Legal Aid Board to see what the possibilities are on having the report within a shorter period than 12 months. I cannot give any commitment that it will end up that way, but I will examine it.

This is an important amendment and I am concerned with the Minister's view of one year, as against six or three months, as being adequate for the publishing of the report. Section 9 (3) states that "The Minister shall cause a copy of every report received by him or her under subsection (1) to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas.”. The Minister should also put a time limit on that. I had the experience of reports being given to the Department, where they lay waiting. The board may produce the report and give it to the Department but it may not be published for some time after that. I urge the Minister to consider including a time deadline in that as well.

I am sorry to continue on this, but what the Minister is saying is that a year is acceptable in this case because the delays have been unnaturally long by normal standards hitherto, which is almost the same as saying that the worse one has been, the more relaxed a deadline one should impose because there will be a big improvement anyway. I would not approach it from that point of view — I can see the reasoning behind that — but one should not say the worse one has been the less demanding we will be compared with other bodies from whom a report is required every three months.

How can the board itself be fully aware of what is happening within its own jurisdiction if it has to wait two and a half years before it can put a systematic review of what happened at that time in front of it? An annual report is not simply a dead body of information for a board as such. It requires information to know the direction of developments, to see what improvements it might be possible to make and to respond in time to changing patterns. It cannot do this entirely by instinct, however inspired and dedicated a board it may be. I am not being derogatory of the board — from what the Minister said this morning, I am sure we have an extremely effectively functioning and committed board — but I find it very difficult to see how a board could be satisfied with having a report being delayed for so long.

The board will have great difficulty if it only gets the report two and a half years after the year in question, which is precisely the reason why I am insisting in the Bill that it is produced within 12 months at the latest. That would be a major improvement and would be a valuable addition, not only to the members of the board but to politicians and members of the public who should have that information available to them. Under this provision they would have it within 12 months or a shorter period if that may emerge — I give no guarantees on this — from my consultations with the board and its chief executive. In so far as laying the reports before the House is concerned — that point was raised by Senator Quinn — any reports that I received since I became Minister were laid before both Houses within one week of the date on which I received them.

I will not press this amendment, but I express my unease at the direction in which this discussion has taken and the problems that have been perceived.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Section 9 agreed to.
SECTION 10.

I move amendment No. 22:

In page 9, subsection (1), line 9, after "Commissioners", to insert "normally following an open competition, adequately advertised,".

I may almost be out of procedural order here. It may be the case that the Civil Service Commissioners advertise everything anyway and that, therefore, there is no need whatsoever for this amendment, but I was not sure of the situation. Presumably there is a now a chief executive of the board and a new procedure takes over. I did not know what transitional arrangements, if any, were envisaged, which is the reason why I put in the word "normally". I am just seeking clarification of the situation. If I am wrong, then so be it.

Section 10 provides for the appointment of the chief executive of the Civil Legal Aid Board by the Minister on the advice of the Civil Service Commissioners. Senator Lee's amendment proposes the addition of the words "normally following an open competition, adequately advertised". The Civil Service Commission regulations, by virtue of section 10 (1) of the Bill, will govern the competition for appointment of the chief executive of the Civil Legal Aid Board. The intention is that the post will be filled following an open competition. However, the amendment would seem to admit the possibility of filling the post by other means, given that it uses the words "normally following an open competition". The amendment on that basis would run counter to policy in relation to the method of filling the post and, consequently, I cannot accept it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

As it is now 4 p.m. I call the Leader.

The intention this morning on the Order of Business was that if it appeared that Committee Stage would be completed we would continue. Since that is not the case, as agreed by the Whips, we will stay with the normal Thursday practice and adjourn.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
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