This is a standard provision in relation to ministerial orders. We have considered it appropriate that orders made by the company should also be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. The company is being given the right to make secondary legislation and it is appropriate that its orders and regulations should be subject to the approval of the House in the same way as orders and regulations made by Ministers. This will enable the Oireachtas to control the exercise of powers delegated to the Minister and the company under this Act.
SECTION 6.
Question proposed: "That section 6 stand part of the Bill."
The Minister's justification for the section is very sweeping. He stated, quite comfortably, that all this requires the approval of the House, but the form of those orders does not require the active approval of the House; it requires the House to take action if it wants to annul those orders. I would not like the Minister to feel I was criticising him directly——
I know the Deputy would not.
——but I would criticise him collectively. Recently my party wished to annul a matter that had been carried out by order but the Government scuppered the entire matter by not making time available because, of course, it is the Government who allocate the time in this House to debate such matters. That was a policy issue on the environment which we regarded as important. A similar provision is contained in nearly every Bill that comes before the House and if the Government does not want to be interrogated or made to justify what it wants to do it can simply refuse to grant Government time to debate a motion to annul. The orders made by the Minister under the provisions of the Act come into force and last for as long as the Government desires. That is a fundamentally anti-democratic procedure and I object to it.
All Departments provide the same justification for this, it is an article of faith with them. They maintain it would be inconvenient and excessively time consuming to have all such orders brought before the House in a form which would require them to be debated and confirmed and I agree with that. However, I will not be put off by that disingenuous approach if the Minister trots it out again today.
I invite the Minister to reflect on the following matters. Most of the orders proposed under this Bill will deal with fairly routine matters and others will deal with technical ones where we have entrusted agencies and people with particular skills with certain powers. I am not suggesting that the House should second guess all those matters. This provision will apply also to orders made, for example, under section 46 which states that the Minister may make such orders as appear to him necessary or expedient for carrying out and giving effect to or to any provision of the Eurocontrol Convention and the statute of the Agency annexed thereto. Deputy Noonan raised a question earlier on the status of such conventions in our law. It is now being proposed that we could give effect to the provisions of such conventions by ministerial order, without asking ourselves what is being done.
Section 57 contains a similar provision. Under that section the Minister may by order declare that any state specified in the order is a party to the Eurocontrol Convention and an order enforced under subsection (1) shall be evidence that things are as the Minister claims them to be.
The Minister may make such an order under the provisions of section 6 and the House, if it wishes to examine it, has to do so within 21 sitting days but relying entirely on the grace and favour of the Government to make time available. In the normal course of events a Deputy making such a case would state politely that he or she is not suggesting the Government would act in anything other than a democratic fashion, but unfortunately, recent evidence indicates that we can no longer say that.
The Government operated in a totally undemocratic fashion recently by refusing to give the Opposition time to debate a motion to annul an order on an important matter that should, at least, have been debated. Therefore, the House has no democratic protection under the provisions that govern this type of order and it is regrettable that recent evidence shows that this House has no democratic protection from the Government in office because it refuses to provide time to debate such matters.
This provision will also cover orders made under section 58 which provides that the company may make such orders as appear to it to be necessary or expedient for the purposes of giving effect to the annexes to the Chicago Convention. Subsection (2) provides that the Minister may by order amend the Schedule by the insertion therein of a reference to an annexe to the Chicago Convention. That relates to Deputy Noonan's earlier question. Under the provisions of section 6 the House will be unable to examine orders laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas or to ask the Minister to justify his actions. I will continue to make a case in respect of this matter for as long as this blanket provision appears in Bills.
The form provided in section 6 for such orders is entirely appropriate for what we might call routine, administrative or technical matters. However, it is totally inappropriate for matters that require assessment or judgment as to the political opportunity or suitability of the Act and the matters covered in sections 46, 57 and 58 require some political justification. Under the terms of recent court judgments they require more than a political justification, they require the sovereign Act of Parliament to give agreement to them.
I am sure the Minister's brief states that this is all nonsense and would make the whole operation tedious and time consuming but I hope he does not say that. I have not tabled an amendment on this matter because I am browned off tabling amendments when it is abundantly clear that the Government does not want to consider changing the position in that regard and the blame lies with the Ministers. I will not on this occasion suggeest that any blame lies with the Administration. We have been doing this for the past 70 years in this State, it has always worked and nobody has created much of a row about it. Only rarely in any proposed legislation is there an opportunity to debate such orders. The matter has become much more serious because on the one occasion in recent years when the Opposition sought the right to use the provisions of this type of section in other legislation the Government stymied it by not allowing time to debate it. The provision in section 6 which states that if a resolution annulling the order or regulation is passed by either House within the next subsequent 21 days on which that House sits the order or regulation will be annulled accordingly is inserted only to take the bare look off it. It is not worth the paper it is written on because this Government does not want the bother of discussing such matters. Therefore, we must distrust every issue of which the Government proposes to use that type of order.
I am not trying to butter up the Minister, but I have had dealings with him on a number of other issues in his present transmogrification and in previous ones and have always found him to be open to suggestions. If the Minister means what he indicated, that he is not hide bound by the traditions of drafting legislation and is prepared to take an open view on the matter, I would be delighted to hear that between now and Report Stage he will consider providing for the active order, at least in relation to the provisions of sections 46, 57 and 58. There may be other sections involved also because it has been my experience in recombing previous Bills in the light of this concern that the provisions of this insidious type tend to be even wider than they appear at first sight.
I hope the Minister will reflect on the matter between now and Report Stage. However, I would probably fall off my chair with shock if, on Report Stage, the Minister proposed an order covering the provisions to which I referred. If he were to do that he would not alone be acting legislatively in a very proper manner, but would also be acting democratically. He would be restoring the tattered remains of the reputation and claim of this Government to be an open one in that we would no longer have to depend on the grace and favour of the Government to raise questions on those matters once this pernicious section is passed in the Bill.
I have the formidable task to respond to that fine dissertation on democracy by Deputy Dukes. He is a much more experienced parliamentarian than I and has a long record of fine service in the Oireachtas. I understand clearly what he has said. I support the democratic process and believe that it should be transparent. However, I would not agree entirely with everything Deputy Dukes stated. There are ways and means of raising such matters in the Houses of the Oireachtas. A Member may table a Parliamentary Question or seek to raise an issue on the Adjournment.
I have a spoken reference to every one of them.
I assure both Deputy Dukes and the Committee that ANSO is a very sensitive organisation. The new Irish Aviation Authority will be a sensitive organisation dealing with important matters relating to the safety of people and important technical regulations will have to be introduced. If anybody questioned any of those regulations there would be an immediate response to ensure transparency and absolute clarity in the effect of such regulations. However, in deference to what Deputy Dukes stated and in order to be absolutely certain that there is transparency in the democratic process I will reconsider the position.
The Minister should make the requirement a positive one.
I will be positively disposed to reconsider it.
All the self deprecation the Minister put forward about his unease with the democratic process is a weapon west of the Shannon. We will not fall for that.
That is the democratic process west and east of the Shannon.
Question put and agreed to.