Dáil owes it to public to fix committee rules, says Ceann Comhairle

Oireachtas committees “will not be nobbled” despite new laws being needed after the damning Angela Kerins Supreme Court judgement, the Dáil chairman has insisted.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Examiner, Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl says that while the then Public Accounts Committee “broke the law” in relation to how it treated Ms Kerins in 2012, new rules must not lead to a watering down of the powers of important committees.

“Absolutely, first of all, is that we have to guarantee that committees won’t be nobbled, that is the crucial thing. I hope that arising out of the review that is going on that the committee system will be strengthened and will be able to move forward with greater certainty,” he says.

“The Supreme Court was very explicit, it was the fault of the House — the 158 members of the Dáil share the blame for that.

“The Supreme Court found that in this instance... we trampled on the rights of a citizen, that we acted outside the law and that we were wrong. We owe it to the public to get it right, and that is what I intend to do,” he says.

But the impact of the judgement was immediate with the John Delaney stone-walling of the sport committee occurring within a matter of days.

The Ceann Comhairle says new rules being drafted will have to ensure “that never happens again”. He describes the Delaney incident as “unfortunate, but predictable”.

It is understandable that in the immediate aftermath of a Supreme Court judgement that there would be some concern and uncertainty. I think the review will have to look at that sort of scenario.

"On a human level, it is easy to understand how that happened because it came in the immediate aftermath of the Kerins judgement where uncertainty prevailed,” he says.

“People here within the system were super conscious of the decision and super sensitive not to do anything that might be considered to be untoward. But in the review, we will take a cold, clinical, long, and hard look at that situation to ensure that sort of thing doesn’t happen again. I think it was an unfortunate, but predictable enough, outcome.

“When we have these inquiries and people volunteer to come before them, the least we have the right to expect and the public have a right to expect is full and open disclosure.”

About the review of the rules, he says the judgement of the court was very clear. Only if the Oireachtas “grievously” fails to protect people will it intervene.

“Last year we had 625 committee meetings with 2,100 witnesses — all of that went of without incident. The work of the PAC, both in this Dáil and in previous Dáils, has been of major public importance, but in this case, they did go off the rails in how they dealt with the witness and that must not be allowed happen again,” he says.

So what now?

He says the rules that are there need to be clarified.

“There needs to be absolute certainty for the committees and the witnesses that come before it. We need to respect the findings of the Supreme Court and to ensure the findings of the working group, which will report back in September, are agreed by the committees and implemented.”

He says the PAC needs to be able to do its work and will hopefully be able to do it more effectively as a result of the changes.

He strongly hints that the Dáil’s business committee will take on the additional burden of coordinating schedules so as to avoid the “unreasonable” practice of multiple committees seeking the same witness at the same time. Senior official Robert Watt has highlighted the dilemma of being called before up to three committees at once on the same issue.

“There is a working group established, but I would suspect there would have to be some form of coordination in terms of the committees in how they do their work. One way — and this is strictly a personal view — is that a body like the business committee might look at the work programme over a period of time to ensure, number one, that there would be no duplication.

"Because we have had significant difficulties with witnesses being called, I would say unreasonably, before two or three committees. So that we could work out a realistic and acceptable programme of what committee should be doing what work at what time, and if that can be done then I think that would be beneficial to everyone,” Mr Ó Fearghaíl says.

Despite hours of delays with legislation in both the Dáil and Seanad, the Ceann Comhairle also defended the controversial use of the filibuster, calling it “a legitimate enough tactic”.

“It is an internationally accepted practice. Against all that, if I had a concern about the processing of legislation, is that we are not seeing enough plenary time for legislation,” he says.