Oireachtas is all talk and no investigation

WHEN it emerged that thousands of calls had been placed from within Leinster House to vote for Michael Healy-Rae in a 2007 reality TV programme, the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil was blunt in his assessment.

It was, Sean Barrett said, “an outrageous abuse of facilities”.

That being the case, one might have thought the Oireachtas would have moved heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the issue.

Instead, the Oireachtas is merely going to block calls to premium rate numbers from Leinster House phones, and there will be no further investigation of the Healy-Rae incident.

In other words, the perpetrators will never be identified.

Admittedly, Michael Healy-Rae has paid the Oireachtas for the calls, but he denies making or arranging them. He also denies that his father, Jackie, who was a TD at the time the calls were made, had anything to do with them. So nobody is the wiser. This seems a thoroughly unsatisfactory outcome for conduct which Mr Barrett labelled “an outrageous abuse”.

When the revelations about the phone calls emerged, it fell to the Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privileges, which is headed by Mr Barrett, to examine the matter.

Mr Barrett promised to ensure that the “details of this matter are addressed in full at the next meeting of the committee”.

That meeting took place in private on Thursday, and afterwards, a brief statement was issued.

“Dáil committee takes action on telephones,” the statement declared.

It sounded tough. In reality, it was anything but.

The statement in full is worth repeating: “The Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges has decided that a complete block should be placed on access to premium rate calls from telephones at Leinster House. The committee, which is chaired by the Ceann Comhairle, Deputy Sean Barrett, was acting in response to an incident in which premium rate calls costing over €2,600 were made to a voting line for a reality TV game show.

“The committee said that access to facilities such as telephones was essential for the work of the Dáil and its members but that it was equally important to act where it was clear that facilities were being abused.

“The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has now been asked to amend regulations to give effect to the committee’s decision.”

And that’s where it ended. No mention of whether the committee tried to get to the bottom of who was behind the calls. No mention of any evidence the committee may have heard or sought. No mention of why further inquiries would not be carried out.

In a separate statement earlier this month, the Oireachtas outlined the actions it had taken in 2007 when the incident occurred.

“Because it was established that the number in question was a number to vote for Michael Healy-Rae, the Houses of the Oireachtas wrote to then deputy Jackie Healy-Rae, making him aware of the circumstances of the calls and seeking his comments. No response was received. As the calls could not be attributed to any particular person, there was no basis to pursue the matter further and no further action could be taken.”

As inquiries go, that didn’t sound like a particularly dogged one. The Oireachtas wrote to Jackie Healy-Rae. He failed to respond. And the Oireachtas left it at that.

No follow-up letter or phone call, judging by the Oireachtas’s own statement. No demand that Jackie Healy-Rae at least respond to a query from the national parliament of which he was a member.

It all feels curiously lacking.