Category: Seanad

Greens reduced to a circus act

18th February 2010

When our colleague Senator Deirdre de Búrca resigned from the House last week, she stated one matter of great concern to her former colleagues, namely that the Green Party was having rings run around it by Fianna Fáil. We did not have long to wait to witness precisely what Senator de Búrca was upset about.

We have the spectacle of a Government, senior members of which claim to have confidence in the Minister in the other House, but others that do not have that confidence here.

What possible credibility could attach to any Government, the senior members of which appear not to be able to make up their minds in respect of confidence in a senior, experienced Minister in the Cabinet? We are aware Deputy Paul Gogarty has a background in circus performances but it would appear now the entire Green Party has reduced itself to a circus act. It takes one view in the other House and another view here. It is a matter of grave, considerable moment that should be debated in the House. I defer to Senator Fitzgerald’s proposal to give notice of a motion she intends to raise but this matter should be dealt with urgently today.

Senator Boyle stated in the newspaper, through twitter or whatever this morning that there would be several more chapters to this story. These chapters should unfold now in the interests of the people and the credibility of this Government, which is rapidly disappearing.

What is stopping the Govt having a public inquiry into banks?

20th January 2010

The type of inquiry into the banking system a committee of the Oireachtas may undertake is a live issue in the country. The Supreme Court decision in the Abbeylara case is in place, on which I have two brief points to make. First, there is the question of the restrictions on the Oireachtas in making findings of fact which could touch on the personal culpability of individuals. I understand clearly that there is such a caveat contained within that decision. Second, there is the issue as to whether the Oireachtas ever had lawful authority to carry out such inquiries. These issues are very much on the table.

My party brought forward legislation in the other House to deal with the second of these two issues, but it was rejected by the Government. On the first issue, I do not accept that it is not possible for a committee of the Oireachtas to hold a meaningful inquiry into what went wrong in the banking system without touching on the personal culpability of individuals because there are other places in which that matter should be dealt with. I am a strong supporter of those who say the criminal justice system is where criminal charges ought to be dealt with.

However, this does not prevent serious politicians who claim to have credibility from having an inquiry into the lending practices of the banks to determine what strategies were in place, why AIB and Bank of Ireland now proclaim they had a difficulty because Anglo Irish Bank was doing certain things and they had to follow suit. We need to know what strategies were employed and the history of regulation, including that by politicians. These issues do not turn on the personal culpability of individuals in terms of the level of criminality, rather they are legitimate questions which ought to be pursued in a public inquiry. I believe they could be dealt with, without any worries on a constitutional level, by a committee of the Oireachtas.

The second issue I want to raise can be addressed by the Government, that is, the extraordinary statement or indication to the effect that the commission of inquiry will hold its investigations other than in public. What is the reason for this secrecy? What is the exact position? Last Monday, the hapless Senator Boyle was telling the country that the Green Party was going to a deliver a public inquiry. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, has learned a great deal since he went into Government because he is telling us that black is white and that the inquiry will be held in public. It is a question of saying, in effect, “Well, we are a small party in government; we tried and pushed, but could not deliver.” However, the Minister does not say this, rather he says it will be held in public. What exactly is going on?

Apparently, the Taoiseach said this morning that the commission of inquiry could decide to hold hearings in public. That is a different line. If he is prepared to contemplate the commission of inquiry deciding to hold hearings in public, what is stopping the Government from including it in the terms of reference that the inquiry will be held in public? There is an overwhelming public interest in this inquiry being held in public. The impact of what has happened to the banks and those to whom they loaned money is in the public domain. The 300,000 empty houses are there to be seen plainly by everybody and the impact on people’s lives is also there to be seen. There should be an inquiry and it should be held in public.

No certainty what NAMA will bring

10th November 2009

Yesterday, the Bill that will introduce NAMA began its journey through the Upper House. The Government have insisted that the legislation must be back in the Dail by Thursday, giving the Seanad three days to deal with the Bill. Below is my Second Stage speech. Keep with the site or with the Facebook page for further updates.

It is true there are no certainties in this matter. There can be no certainty on anybody’s part. In particular, the Minister cannot be certain that what he hopes will occur will actually transpire. There can be no certainty associated with the assertion that matters will come right. None of us can be certain with regard to what is going to occur. That is a measure of how momentous and serious is this debate.

We have reached the 11th hour and the Government has signalled that the legislation will return to the Lower House on Thursday, which constitutes a curtailment of the debate in this Chamber. In such circumstances, there is a sense of inevitability regarding Members’ approach to this debate. However, this should not mean we should set aside our serious and genuine objections to what the Minister is proposing.

Like other Senators, I recognise the Minister’s good faith about the way he has approached this matter. I sometimes feel uncomfortable making that point in respect of Government Ministers. I assume good faith on the part of members of the Government, whereas other Senators often use half of the time available to them to inform a Minister that he or she is a great man or woman. I operate on the basis that the Minister for Finance is doing a professional job for the country and believe this is also the basis on which he operates. He does not, therefore, require to be congratulated. In so far as it is important to say so - particularly on a personal level - the Minister’s input has been considerable, if wrong-headed, in recent months. However, that input has been solely motivated by the need to act in the very best interests of the country.

Unfortunately, in the context of what has occurred in the past 15 years, the Minister is dealing with a legacy created by the Government and his party, as a component thereof. It is fine for Senator MacSharry to express his frustration and annoyance that this point continues to be raised. I will not treat him to a few minutes’ worth of material on the Galway tent. Owing to time constraints, I will not refer at all to the history of Fianna Fáil, its associations, etc. but if I had time, I would gladly do so. I am referring to Fianna Fáil as the party of Government; I am not dealing now with its historic links with the building industry or anything else. Fianna Fáil was in office when our current difficulties emerged. It was in power when my party brought forward proposals  in the late 1990s to examine the matter of house prices.

At that time my party argued, in trenchant terms, that there was no requirement to amend the Constitution in order to implement the principal recommendations made in the Kenny report which was published over 35 years ago. These issues were canvassed and debated during the lifetime of the last two or three Administrations. It is not satisfactory for those opposite to simply state they are not to blame and that everything happened around them and that they had nothing to do with it. That is simply not the case.

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Does the Government’s stance on McCarthy make sense?

23rd September 2009

Before we went away for the summer we were told three major reports would be published during the holiday period to which we should all pay attention, which we should all read, understand and be ready to debate when we returned to the House. They were the report on the outline of the legislation on NAMA which has been published, the report of the McCarthy commission and the report of the Commission on Taxation. These three important documents which were flagged at the start of the summer were to form the basis of the debate we would have in the Houses and the broader community on the future of the economy and the country generally.

It has been made clear to the people in the NAMA report how serious, fundamental and historic the exposure of taxpayers will be to the wrongdoing of others. Every time an issue was raised in the Houses about taxation or taxation policy we were told by Senator Dan Boyle and others that it was a matter for the Commission on Taxation. If I heard that once, I heard it 50 times in my two short years in the House. It is not just that the Taoiseach appears to have sidelined the report, rather it has been abandoned. The report of the commission has been jettisoned by the Government and we are now asked to accept that it will play no part in forming policy, but that the Government will pick one good proposal from it, namely, the proposal on carbon tax, and abandon the rest. When we ask whether it is a good idea to have a debate on taxation and public services, Senator Boyle will not be able to say the answer will be found in the report of the commission or that the report will form the basis of our discussion because it has been jettisoned.

Regarding the McCarthy report and what happened today: two things were said by Ministers about the report. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said it would form a key part of budgetary strategy, while the Tánaiste said large parts of it did not make sense.

Can anybody explain which of those two positions is the Government’s? Does the report not make sense, as the Tánaiste has said? Should we take it seriously, as the Minister for Finance has suggested? At the start of the summer, the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said the Opposition would have nowhere to hide when the report was published. His own colleagues have spent the summer looking for somewhere to hide.

The Ministers, Deputies Ó Cuív and Cullen, do not like the report. The Tánaiste does not like it. When people come into the Gallery of this House, they wonder how Senators on the Government side very often make speeches that disagree with Government policy. I remind them that senior Ministers are making a laughing stock of their own Government. They are contributing further to what the Minister, Deputy Gormley, quite correctly described a couple of weeks ago when he bemoaned the complete breakdown in trust in this country’s Government.

Alex on RTE News

15th July 2009

I was featured during the report on the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill in the Seanad on RTE’s Nine O’Clock News last night.

You can view the clip by clicking here.

No excuses for rushing important legislation

3rd July 2009

Why is it that for many weeks there is little or legislation before the House but in the two or three weeks before the end of the session there is an extraordinary flurry of activity with measures being introduced and pushed through both Houses as is happening again now? Why is it that the Minister, the Department or those who manage the flow of business to the Houses cannot pace themselves a little better throughout the year? Why can legislation not be introduced in the House periodically in a manner that will allow it to breathe, as it were?

The Leader of the Seanad often says he does not guillotine legislation and that is true, but that misses the point. It is not a question of saying we can have an hour or two to read the legislation but of allowing the public to consider important legislation over a period of weeks. I am not suggesting that the Government never makes an effort to do that. In fairness, it does. However, that should be the universal approach to legislation, unless it is genuinely emergency legislation which must be put through the Houses in a period of days.

I have in mind some of the criminal justice legislation we are dealing with this week. There are two Bills this week and I presume the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill will be introduced in the House next week. The latter includes proposals for the considerable curtailment of the liberty of the citizen. It may well be that this is justified and that Members of the House support it but it is one of the most serious actions a parliament can take. The guarantee of last September is probably the most serious action a parliament can take in that it mortgages the future and future generations. However, in terms of the liberty of the citizen the proposed legislation provides for the expansion of the use of the Special Criminal Court and removing the important protection that juries provide.

I disagree regarding any further restriction on the use of juries. In the criminal context, in particular, it is a further restriction on the liberty of the individual, as is the introduction of secret hearings in the District Court regarding detentions and so forth. I appeal to the Leader to ensure, especially with legislation of this nature, that the public and the Houses be given an opportunity to consider such legislation over a longer time span. It should certainly be over a period of weeks and not days, as is now being proposed.

Make blasphemy a referendum issue

21st May 2009

The Seanad should take careful note of what has been said by a representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe in relation to adding blasphemy to the Defamation Bill. His comments were reported in yesterday’s newspapers. I ask the House and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to consider a proposal I would like to make. According to the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, he needs to resolve a constitutional dilemma in this area by means of legislation or by means of a constitutional amendment. I am a member of the All-Party Committee on the Constitution which recently recommended that the relevant section of the Constitution should be deleted.

Senator Regan is also a member of the all-party committee, which clearly recommended that this provision should be removed from the Constitution. That view is clearly shared across the board in these Houses. That is the correct way to proceed.

My suggestion to the Minister, through the Leader, is that if the parties in the Oireachtas agree that a series of amendments to the Constitution should be put to the people at an appropriate time, perhaps, although not necessarily, in October of this year, a referendum on the question of blasphemy should be put on that list of matters to be determined by the people on referendum day.

It would be proper to remove the provision in question from the Constitution. If the Minister’s comments are to be taken in good faith, it appears he believes he must do one thing or the other. He seems to be concerned about the possibility of addressing this issue by means of a constitutional amendment. We do not need to have a referendum on this issue tomorrow or the day after. It does not even need to take place this year, although it should not be put on the long finger.

In fairness, this matter has been on the table for ten years. We have lived with other interpretations of the Constitution. We have not rushed to introduce legislation to cater for the outcome of the X case, for example, although I believe we should have done so. In such circumstances, I propose that the Leader of the Seanad should try to secure all-party agreement to ask the Minister to address the matter of blasphemy by means of constitutional amendment at an appropriate time in the future. We should not have to deal with the legislative distraction the Minister is considering.

More :: Listen to the interview with Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on Morning Ireland (begins at 8mins 15secs)

Alex on The Week in Politics

18th May 2009

I appeared on last night’s edition of The Week in Politics on RTE One. It was a Dublin South by-election debate that included Fine Gael’s George Lee and Fianna Fáil’s Shay Brennan.

You can view the programme by clicking here (starts at 32mins).

Delay in renewing adoption agreement with vietnam must be explained

5th May 2009

Labour Party Spokesperson on Children Senator Alex White has criticised the failure of the government to expedite a new adoption agreement with the Vietnamese government.

“The Bi-Lateral Intercountry Adoption Agreement between Ireland and Vietnam expired on May 1st. The ending of this agreement has been looming for months now but despite assurances made by Minister Barry Andrews, the government has failed to effect a renewal of this agreement with the Vietnamese.

“When I raised this urgent issue with Barry Andrews in the Senate some weeks ago I was informed that a new agreement was being sought by officials in his office, who had exchanged various documents with their Vietnamese counterparts.

“Now that the old Agreement has expired there is no legal framework under which Irish couples can adopt a child from Vietnam. This will add to the already considerable anxiety, grief and upset caused to these families by the extraordinary delays in this whole procedure” according to Senator White.

“Given that Russia is also effectively closed to Irish adoptions because of what seems to be a wholesale breakdown in the procedures agreed between the HSE and the Russian authorities, there is now a serious crisis in intercountry adoptions here. This needs to be addressed by immediate action by the government, and I call on Minister Andrews to clarify forthwith precisely what he intends to do with regard to this unacceptable impasse”.

 

When was the last time the HSE contacted Senators rather than celebrities?

30th April 2009

The hospitals co-location project that was announced with much fanfare by the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, and her colleagues in Government was buried by measures taken in the recent budget.

Now that this project, which involved the folly of relying on the property development sector to deal with the development of health care, is in tatters, like many of the Government’s policies, I am seeking a debate in the Seanad with the Minister on how we will fund our health care system and how we will end, once and for all, the disgrace of the two-tier health care system in which people’s means and incomes determine, if not the quality of health care, at least the speed at which they receive it?

In that context, I warmly welcome the publication this week by the Fine Gael Party of a policy programme for universal health insurance. It is an excellent contribution to the debate. The Labour Party has held the view for the best part of a decade and has published extensive policy documents to the effect that universal health insurance is clearly the way we should have proceeded when the matter was being addressed in recent years. It now manifestly is the way forward.

In terms of the standing of politicians, we have discussed on many occasions the bureaucratic monster that is the HSE, its inaccessibility and lack of democratic accountability. It has instituted a programme of public relations, the principle purpose of which is for it to contact “opinion formers”, ‘Celebrity Bainisteoirí’ and other mouthy individuals with whom it intends to discuss problems in the health services so it can get feedback. When was the last time Senators were contacted by the HSE to give feedback? When was Senator MacSharry asked about cancer services in the North West?

I heard a HSE communications expert talking about feedback this morning. People are telling us what is happening. An intensive care nurse told me last week that they cannot get the basic equipment to do their jobs and there is a shortage of staff.

We could not make this up.

This unit in the HSE is engaging in an extraordinary exercise where it contacts these celebrities to give them its spin but it completely lacks democratic accountability in the health service. I get e-mails from it every week, as do other people, but they are spin. I have a question for the HSE about this project: how will it improve health services in this State?

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