I move amendment No. 6a:
In page 4, line 41, to delete " subsection (1) and subsection (2) of ".
SECTION 6.
Amendment agreed to.
Question proposed: " That section 6, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
While this amendment slightly extends the scope of the report in order to get in the programme, one would express the hope that these reports would be fairly full because they will be of importance to people in trying to assess what will have to be done.
I would hope they would be something like the Banking Commission Reports.
I would hope so. The problem is that possibly the commission would get away with a very skimpy report. I would hope that it would set out its work fairly fully and its proposals for the future so that its functions could be properly evaluated.
That is a common-sense view but personally I would only suggest that the report should contain appendices to it re the matters suggested in the amendment here in (4), in other words, instead of having the proposals of the commission circulated with the proposals of the Government, the commission’s proposals should be scheduled or included in the annual report of the commission. It might be going too far to make that mandatory.
As soon as the report is done it is published immediately. The annual report is separate.
Perhaps I am slightly confused.
What Deputy de Valera has in mind is what is called a programme.
Deputy O'Malley's approach is a commonsense one and mine could be too formal and perhaps too restrictive so I will not press it.
The weakness in section 5 is that the programme will be laid before both Houses only when it is approved by the Government. The point we have been trying to make, but which might be covered in the annual report, is that if there is a significant difference between the programme as put up by the commission and as ultimately approved by the Government the original unapproved programme would be available for public inspection or that the public would be aware of what it was.
This is what happened in England but just on the content of the report. I happen to have here the second annual report of the English Law Commission. It is a detailed document and it analyses each part of the programme, says how far it has gone and what problems have arisen. It is a progress report in the sense of how it is getting on and what progress is being made.
It would appear to me that the commission will want to put detail into the report to show what they have been at.
Question put and agreed to.