Apologies have been received from Deputy Paul McGrath and Senator Jim Higgins.
Business of Joint Committee.
I propose the committee pass a vote of sympathy to Deputy Paul McGrath on the death of his brother during the week.
I was not aware of that. The committee will join with Deputy Bruton in the vote of sympathy and I thank him for informing the committee.
The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meetings of 21 and 27 January 2004. Draft minutes of the last two meetings of the joint committee have been circulated. Are the minutes of the meeting of 21 January agreed? Agreed. Are the minutes of the meeting of 27 January agreed? Agreed. Are there any matters arising from the minutes which were not covered at the meeting?
The next item on the agenda is correspondence. There are a couple of separate items of correspondence. The sub-committee on European scrutiny has sent this committee a list of documents and proposals considered and the decisions taken at its meeting on 22 January 2004. The committee has not referred any proposal to this committee for further scrutiny. It has, however, drawn the committee's attention to documents COM 2003 703, 721 and 761 but it has not recommended that these proposals be scrutinised by this committee. Is it agreed that documents COM 2003 703, 721 and 761 do not warrant scrutiny by this committee? Agreed. Is it agreed that none of the other proposals considered by the sub-committee on 22 January 2004 warrants scrutiny by the committee? Agreed.
A copy of an article from last Friday's edition of The Irish Times which reports comments made about accountability of the Central Bank and the Financial Services Authority of Ireland was circulated to members. The comments were made in the course of a speech at the centenary debate of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.In particular, the speech implied that this committee does not take its work seriously in its role of holding the Central Bank and the Financial Services Authority of Ireland to account. The speech acknowledged that the committee had already met with the director of consumer affairs of IFSRA. It also acknowledged the resourcing constraints under which the committee operates and expressed the hope that the level of funding and resources will increase now that the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has come into being.
Members may wish to comment on that article because it was quite critical of this committee. I remind members that they should not criticise a person outside the House by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable, as he or she is defenceless against accusations made under privilege.
To be fair to this commentator, before the IFSRA Bill was passed in the House, he indicated that he believed Oireachtas scrutiny of this regulator would be crucial to its long-term success. Even then he pointed to the weakness of the resource base in the committee structure to enable that work to be carried out. These comments are a follow-up. They are perhaps slightly premature in respect of IFSRA because it is not that long in place and in the normal course of events would not appear before this committee for scrutiny so early in its existence.
To be fair to the committee, the director of consumer affairs of that body has appeared before us to account for her stewardship. It is her end of the business that has been one of the most critical issues from the point of view of the general public, if not from the point of view of the insiders of the financial service sector. The criticism of the committee is a little unfair in one respect but it highlights the question of who regulates the regulators. If it is not to be Ministers who take a strong supervisory role with regard to regulators, it probably falls to this committee to do so. If that is the case then in turn the committee probably needs analytical back-up to do the sort of work that is required.
There will always be the difficulty that Deputies who try to put in a large amount of work without committee back-up will have to neglect other duties both in the House and outside. We are pulled in a number of directions. Resources and statutory recognition of the role of the Oireachtas in the supervision of regulators needs to be put in place. It is only grudgingly there when sometimes Government includes the reference that bodies should report to the Oireachtas and that reportage is often curtailed. The criticism is valid therefore in some respects. In order to respond to this challenge there needs to be a change both in our system and in the work ethic of Deputies.
I telephoned the clerk of the committee to draw his attention to the comments that were published in a number of national newspapers. I regard the comments as very interesting and the committee should not be precious about somebody legitimately raising the question of the quality of Oireachtas scrutiny. I received a copy of the paper which Mr. Westrup had previously done as part of a degree course in Trinity College on the subject of the accountability of financial services regulation in Ireland. He examined the record up to the period of the publication of the paper in early 2002 of the Oireachtas finance committee and its predecessor.
Deputy O'Keeffe has argued that this committee is very hard working. We did important work in respect of critical areas such as the Freedom of Information Act and the film industry in Ireland, for instance. Nonetheless, the committee's work in overseeing the work of regulators is important and we do not have any resources to assist us in carrying out that work. It would be useful to invite Mr. Westrup to make a presentation to the committee about the areas where he believes the committee is lacking in its performance as the overseer of regulators.
There are a number of members of the committee with specialist expertise in economics and finance and others with a wide range of practical business experience. The committee is actually a very good committee from the point of view of experience but it definitely does not have the resources. We should engage in a dialogue with people such as Mr. Westrup to decide how the committee can best fulfil that important overseeing role. I am in favour of inviting Mr. Westrup to appear before the committee.
I also read in the newspapers that the ACCA which was hosting this lecture indicated that it had invited politicians to the presentation. Perhaps I was sent the invitation but it did not pass through my office. I would have been happy to attend and listen to his comments. If lectures of interest to the functions of the committee arise, I ask the committee secretariat to devise a method of advising members of the committee and one or two members might be able to attend. We could then accumulate whatever wisdom is on offer through that mechanism.
It is an important contribution, nevertheless, as it is an external, dislocated but clearly not disinterested opinion of the working of not just this committee but of Oireachtas committees in general. Nobody could argue strenuously against the claim, "The fact remains that the Oireachtas has given regulators great powers, but has largely chosen to leave them to their own devices, leaving a major gap in the accountability structure." This must be acknowledged. The Chairman is faced by three Opposition Deputies, who, I understand, are totally reliant on their own efforts in preparing for the engagements at this series of meetings. This is our second in two days. There are many for which we must prepare apart from our main Chamber preparatory work.
We should rather translate Mr. Westrup's contribution and criticism into a positive one and try to employ it properly employ in support of our continual argument in support of additional resources for Deputies and for particular committees. This is one such committee that would do well from a significant backup provision that we just do not enjoy. It has been said that research is scanty. I could argue that is not the case. Each of us makes a substantial effort in preparing for meetings. Having said that, the committee process is indeed haphazard as he describes.
Rather than reacting in a defensive knee-jerk way to the comments, we should take them in a positive frame of mind and try to translate them to the advantage of the committee and to the processes of the Oireachtas. Criticism such as this should be directed to the new commission. We should see substantive progress made in the workings of committees and the access to research, advice and other important backup services in the first instance for Opposition Members so that we can level the playing pitch somewhat.
Even if we quadrupled our backup it is not realistic in one sense to think we could regulate the regulators. Our involvement is when particular issues of controversy arise. It is not possible to judge this matter in abstracto. If particular issues arise we should be able to investigate them, as we have done with other issues in other areas. It is not our job to carry out some kind of day-to-day supervision of a regulator, which would be totally unrealistic. We are talking about a very new organisation and the thesis has not yet been seriously tested.
As we will discuss our work programme at our next meeting, we can discuss whether to follow up the point made by the gentleman and decide whether we should invite him to appear before the committee, which may not be necessary as we have the gist of his comments.
I would suggest that we should call him before us. He makes a point that many of us have made elsewhere about the lack of resourcing available to committees. It may be helpful to have him here. I do not believe he is making criticism specific to the committee in the sense that there is a larger issue of how well Oireachtas committees can monitor various non-elected or semi-autonomous bodies. There is a real issue here and it would be good to hear from him directly.
It was not a throwaway remark when I suggested that this matter be referred to the new Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. I believe such matters now come under its substantive address. If the Chair agrees, the clerk might send a cover note.
We should write to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission highlighting the issue. While specific comment was made about this committee, the issue goes beyond this committee. We should highlight how the public sees the shortfall in the operation of some of the committees due to lack of resources and research facilities. We should ask the commission to investigate the matter and give us its opinion. We will do both.
Do we need to decide whether we will invite the gentleman in question or will we consider it as part of our work programme? Our work programme could take every second day from now to the end of the year if we are to complete it. A number of bodies, whose Estimates we approve on an annual basis, have never been invited to appear before the committee and we need to address that.
The fact that someone has levelled a degree of criticism is not sufficient reason to ask him to appear before the committee. In one instance he erroneously pointed out that we had not met representatives of IFSRA. However, he was correct in another point about the Central Bank, whose representatives we have not met in the recent past. We should get on with our work and take the criticism in the spirit in which it was presented.
Can we agree on that approach? We know the comments, which we are referring to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. In our work programme for the coming year we will take up the issues but will not specifically invite the gentleman as we have a heavy schedule.
I believe it would be worth hearing him.
If every person who writes to or makes a comment on the committee ends up being invited to appear before it we will never get to deal with our own work agenda.
It would end up proving the point.
Yes.
I believe Mr. Westrup is in a slightly different situation. He comments regularly on financial regulation and the way it is implemented. He is not just anybody writing a letter to the newspaper as a result of feeling miffed about some matter. He has specialised on this area.
Regardless of whether we like or accept it, the Oireachtas has a significant theoretical level of oversight of various regulatory agencies. We have not taken a point of view other than examinations from time to time of how it is most appropriate to exercise that oversight function. This is worth investigating and if he has a specialist expertise, there is a value in talking to him and perhaps others who might have expertise in carrying out an oversight function efficiently.
There seems to be consensus that this man may have something worthwhile to contribute to the work of the committee. However, it should be considered in the context of the work programme. Perhaps when representatives of the Central Bank or IFSRA appear before the committee, we should arrange for this man to appear a week before and get a shortlist of the key tests of performance. We should use his skills to sharpen our work rather than meeting him in a vacuum.
We will discuss our work programme at our next meeting.
We must rely on a few words in The Irish Times to understand his criticism. While it is a newspaper of record it is not exhaustively so. In the interim should we not write to him to ask him to spell out areas in which he feels our scrutiny role could be improved?
The full text of his address to the ACCA centenary breakfast has been circulated.
I have that. It is not entirely exhaustive regarding this committee. It might be positive for us to ask him to set out in detail where he felt the committee's level of research is scanty and the committee process is haphazard. These are throwaway lines. The result might be interesting if we asked him to spell out in detail where he feels our scrutiny role could be enhanced. Implicit in what he states is the assumption that we can do better and that he has some idea of how that could be accomplished.
The request is that the interim should not be very long. Our next meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday. We will discuss the matter then. Today, I seek only to get the general views of committee members. That has been done. We will conclude the matter next week when talking about our work programme for 2004. We will decide then whether to seek a written invitation or to call the gentleman in question to attend a meeting.