Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 are related and may be discussed together by agreement.
SECTION 5.
I move amendment No. 4:
In page 6, paragraph (d), line 19, after "appropriate." to insert "The trustees of the scheme should be furnished with a copy of any such report or reports, as the case may be.".
The amendment proposes that the board should have power to prepare reports on any investigation it may carry out, and gives the board discretion as to whom the report may be made available. It would seem right and equitable that the trustees should be furnished with any report because of their importance. That should be written into the Bill.
The Deputy's amendment proposes that any pensions board report prepared in relation to an investigation should be furnished to the trustees of the scheme involved. The issue has already been discussed in detail with the board. Its view in principle is that, where possible, reports should be available to all relevant parties. The policy of making such reports available is one with which I am in full agreement and the board is aware of my view. However, I am also aware that a case could arise where it would not be appropriate for some reason to furnish such a report to the trustees of the scheme. Accordingly, I am reluctant to put such a provision in legislation at this stage.
However, I acknowledge the intent of the Deputy's amendment. While I oppose its introduction, it is my intention to keep the matter under review and if, for example, it transpired that reports were not being made available to the trustees without sufficiently good cause, the matter could be revisited. It echoes our earlier discussion about privilege, absolute privilege and damage to companies.
The board might decide for very good reasons that it would not be appropriate to issue a report, either publicly or to the trustees. If the legislation obliged them to do so in all circumstances, it would tie the board's hands in using its judgment as to the best interests of the members of such a scheme and, perhaps, of the industry generally. I would rather leave the flexibility there for the moment, but if we find in the course of time that reports are being withheld without good reason, of course, we can come back to it.
The point made by Deputy Walsh is a good one and the Minister will examine it further. There will obviously be a question as to which people should not get reports. The Minister may have some knowledge of that and some indication of where there would be a problem in specific circumstances. It may be desirable to lay published reports on these schemes before the House. They would then be centrally available.
Bearing in mind that most of the legislation came from concerns in the House in the first instance, it could be quite important that, once published, reports are readily accessible to Members. The Minister may consider that on Report Stage. I will not push it now but it is something that came to my mind in discussing the issue.
I do not see any difficulty with that being the practice but I am not sure it is necessary to have it incorporated in legislation. I see no reason the Committee on Social Affairs should not have important reports available to it. There may well be many reports of a fairly trivial or minor nature and we do not want to overload the system with such reports that are not of general significance. I would rather leave it to the good sense of the board, the Minister and the Opposition to decide that they want items X or Y.
The danger with this is that one is not alerted to things that are in reports. Since the Minister left the House——
I did not leave the House at all.
——and went to the upper echelons of ministerial responsibility, we have become increasingly computerised. These things should be available just like the internet. I can get reports from the US Congress and from Westminster very easily that way. The same should be available to Oireachtas Committees. When a board is given this kind of privilege and position it would be good for our democracy, and only right, that published reports should be easily accessible to Members of the House.
The board may be in a position to make much of the information, which is made available to the industry and to trustees, is also available to Members of the House without difficulty because of the way in which our computerisation has advanced.
It has been drawn to my attention that there are legal implications in the words "to publish". To make public is not the same thing as to publish. To make a report available to one person is, apparently, legally, to publish but it does not necessarily mean it is being made public. That kind of consideration must be borne in mind as well. I am not at all averse to the idea of the board making available its reports; in any event, the ones that have been made public to Members of the House. I will draw that to their attention. If it is found that it is not working satisfactorily we can revisit it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 5:
In page 6, paragraph (d), to delete lines 20 and 21 and substitute the following:
"(9) For the purposes of the law of defamation, the publication by, the Board of any report prepared under this section shall be absolutely privileged.'.".
This amendment is to clarify that any report prepared by the board or which it causes to have prepared in the course of any investigation it might undertake under section 18 of the Pension Act will be absolutely privileged for the purposes of the law of defamation.
The result of this amendment will be that the publication of a report by the board will be absolutely privileged. A report prepared by any person or organisation for the board will have qualified privilege, which means that privilege will apply provided the report is prepared in good faith and without malice.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 5, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 6 to 9, inclusive agreed to.