Oireachtas Bills 1997 – 2010

We frequently hear talk of how much (or how little) legislation is passed by the Oireachtas. We also hear about Bills languishing at Committee Stage for years. Unfortunately the Oireachtas website isn’t very useful for discerning any patterns or where Bills are, or when exactly they were introduced. In an attempt to make this much clearer, we (excellent Alexia is keen to help, and we need more help from readers) are going to try and build a spreadsheet that at least contains the current state of affairs, and included all Bills introduced since 1997. You can see what we’ve pieced together so far, and it is by no means complete or exhaustive.

Oireachtas bills 2010, 2009

If you want to help, please get in touch. Future applications would include using the Google Charts API to map legislative processes digitally.

State-owned companies

As part of an ongoing process we will be publishing the company accounts of all State-owned companies. Some of these accounts may be published in some form already, but we have gone to the CRO to get the most recent set of accounts and B1 certificate. This will involve dozens of companies but should make a useful reference archive. You will see the accounts under the “Finance – State-owned companies” category above.

Gogarty's vote

Pat Leahy in the Any Other Business column in the Sunday Business Post today…

Green deputy Paul Gogarty appears to have determined a new method of voting in the Dáil chamber, superseding even the swanky electronic voting system that was introduced some years ago and still causes some deputies problems.

When the motion of confidence in the government was put to the House last Tuesday evening, Gogarty responded not by the customary ‘‘Tá’’ by which deputies orally indicate their positions before a formal vote. Instead, the TD gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up signal to the Ceann Comhairle.

Mind you, he then appeared to answer ‘‘Níl’’ along with the opposition deputies. Irrepressible is the mot juste.

Transcript from speech by Finian McGrath on the motion of confidence.

Finian McGrath: […] For this reason, I have no confidence in this Government. This is the reality for many people on the ground. It is about credibility, competence and confidence. I might add that I do not necessarily have confidence in some of the other parties who cannot make up their minds on particular issues and do not know where they stand on these matters.

I have in the past made some unpopular decisions in regard to banking but I did so in the national interest.

Paul Gogarty: Hear, hear.

FM: Unlike others, I do not play politics with the economic future of this country. The Government must accept responsibility for its part in wrecking this economy […]

Interesting.

Also, later in the debate…

PG: The two parties favouring an election would be seriously inconvenienced if one were called. Voters would be given the choice between an incompetent Fianna Fáil Administration and a bland uninspiring Fine Gael alliance with their Labour Party clones, chips off the old block. It would be the Dolly alliance.

Pity it wasn’t an electronic vote, eh?

Well worth reading McGrath’s speech in full too.

Digest – June 20 2010

Who knows how it goes?

HOME

New online-only news site, Dublin Observer. Early days but good to see.

McWilliams in the Sunday Business Post…

This fundamental economic truth seems to evade our politicians. They don’t seem to realise that the more blank cheques they write to shore up the European banking system, the more they are burdening us with future taxes. This tax burden causes the economies to contract more. Writing cheques to bail out Europe’s banks won’t help anyone, apart from the creditors of the banks – who should suffer anyway. This is how capitalism works.

The lender is as culpable in a crisis. Was that not the capitalism you learned too?

Constantin Gurdgiev on the extension of the bank guarantee.

Gerard Cunningham walks along the canal with his camera.

Telegraph photoshops the border into NASA image. Ye’wah? Via Skin Flicks.

Letter to the editor in the Irish Independent from a Declan Doyle.

Words like nepotism, largesse and cronyism are employed by polite and civilised society to convey its discomfiture with immoral conduct.

But the times in which we live demand that we develop a language and attitude more fitting to both describe and challenge the enemy Ireland faces today.

Very simply, public life has been criminalised.

We need to ‘man up’ as a nation and admit this…

Political editor of BBC Northern Ireland blogs on the release of the Saville Report.

WORLD Continue reading “Digest – June 20 2010”

O’Neill judgment

Back in 2007 Gary Fitzgerald, a junior counsel, sought Cabinet records from the Department of An Taoiseach relating to carbon emissions under the European Environmental Information Regulations. The Department refused release of some records on the basis of constitutional Cabinet confidentiality. The Commissioner for Environmental Information ordered the release of the documents, but An Taoiseach appealed the matter to the High Court. The question in part related to whether the European Directive (which includes a mandatory release element in relation to emissions into the environment) took precedence over our Constitution – and also on how the Directive was transposed into legislation (SI 133/2007). An Taoiseach won the appeal, so the information will not be released. See Irish Times report here.

The full judgment is here:



Canadian Supreme Court decision

Yesterday there was a landmark decision by the Canadian Supreme Court, in Ministry of Public Safety and Security (Formerly Solicitor General) and Attorney General of Ontario vs Criminal Lawyers’ Association (and others). You can read the decision in full here. The Globe and Mail details the case:

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that an internal police report into a botched 1983 police investigation can potentially be suppressed without violating constitutional guarantees to free expression and informed public debate.

However, in a 7-0 ruling today, the Court also recognized the importance of information in a democracy and recognized a right to obtain suppressed information that is necessary to a full public debate of an important issue.

“To demonstrate that there is expressive content in accessing these documents, a claimant must establish that the denial of access effectively precludes meaningful public discussion on matters of public interest,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Madam Justice Rosalie Abella wrote for the Court.

It said in the right circumstances, citizens can wrest confidential information from government hands unless it is protected by privilege, Cabinet confidentiality or its disclosure would interfere with the proper functioning of a government institution.

And (my emphasis):

Lawyers who argued the case welcomed the ruling as a long-awaited recognition of the role that access to information plays in a democracy.

“Canada has become the first western country to recognize that access to information is not just a gift to Canadians,” said lawyer Brad Elberg, who represented the Criminal Lawyers Association. “It is guaranteed to us as part of our constitutional right of freedom of expression. If a court finds that a citizen requires government information to meaningfully express her or himself, the constitution may require the government to give the citizen access to that information.”

The best line of the judgement:

In sum, there is a prima facie case that s. 2(b) [of the c may require disclosure of documents in government hands where it is shown that, without the desired access, meaningful public discussion and criticism on matters of public interest would be substantially impeded. As Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote in his 1913 article in Harper’s Weekly entitled “ What Publicity Can Do”: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants … .” Open government requires that the citizenry be granted access to government records when it is necessary to meaningful public debate on the conduct of government institutions.