thats one side of it wtb, there is a constitutional right to a good name and fair procedures. would you really like the likes of healy rae and lowry deciding, in their opinion, if you had done something and if they had given you fair procedures? the other thing to bear in mind is the tribalism and punch and judy style of irish politics. i know callely is a cunt of the highest order but can you say he got a fair hearing in the seanad enquiry?
Well if the President didnât refer it, it would become law until successfully challenged by a judge. There is nothing you can do about ânemo iudex in sua causaâ in this case. The Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality for all citizens including the judiciary. Sure whatâs to stop them interpreting this amendment in some kind of a crazy way that would limit the scope of a pay cut?
My main problem with the other amendment is that to a far greater extent than in other jurisdictions, the House here is effectively an extension of the Executive. There is nothing really to stop this amendment being used at some point in the future as a mechanism for Governments of the day to use the moral weight of a parliamentary hearing to make political points about people. Thereâs just a hint of the slippery slope about it as far as Iâm concerned.
Yeah but thatâs doomsday scenario stuff, art. As you well know an inquiry with Healy-Rae and Lowry at its head would have no credibility to begin with. The real benefit would be bringing into the open, public discussions on scandals and issues in a manner that is much more timely and efficient than is currently the case. Too many major incidents occur in this country that are never brought to light and are never investigated in any serious way. Just look at the banking scandal. After 3 years, absolutely sweet fuck all has been told to the public about what really happened and about who was responsible for decisions which will hang over the country for decades. Itâs simply unacceptable.
I completely take on board the argument that these powers are open to abuse, but as far as I can see the corruption and lack of accountability in Irish public life at the moment seems to be abuse on a scale that extends far beyond any realistic scenario anyone has outlined to date. We have a parliament that at the moment is largely useless to the Irish people. With this amendment they might at least be required to ask some real questions of powerful people on our behalf.
[quote name=âWatch The Breakâ timestamp='131
considering how bent and parished pumped in the oireachtas, can you really see fair fair and impartial hearings? ffs the cunts fucked on a seeming slam dunk with callely. the cunts in the dail couldnt even bring dillie o wee up about the affidavit and these are the people youâd charge with overseeing these enquiries?
4° It shall be for the House or Houses concerned to determine, with due regard to the principles of fair procedures, the appropriate balance between the rights of persons and the public interest for the purposes of ensuring an effective inquiry into any matter to which subsection 2° applies.
itâs this section that i have the problem with,as per the constitution the oireachtas makes the laws and the courts interpret them itâs up to the courts to determine if someoneâs rights have been trampled not for the oireachtas during an enquiry. anyway we wouldnt need this enquiry or tribunal bullshit if the files were handed to the dpp, cops and ODCE in the first instance and they were then given rfree reign. the fact that this doesnt happen is down to politicians and now you want them to have the power to conduct the enquiries themselves ?
Ah I donât know if I buy that argument to be honest art. Just because something didnât work once doesnât mean itâs useless.
What are the differences between this and the US and UK inquiry systems?
Why do changes to judges pay have to go to a referendum? Am I right in presuming that if it were a pay rise there wouldnât be a need for a vote?
At present, Article 35.5 of the Constitution states:
âThe remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office.â
It is proposed to replace this with the following wording:
5 1° The remuneration of judges shall not be reduced during their continuance in office save in accordance with this section.
2° The remuneration of judges is subject to the imposition of taxes, levies or other charges that are imposed by law on persons generally or persons belonging to a particular class.
3° Where, before or after the enactment of this section, reductions have been or are made by law to the remuneration of persons belonging to classes of persons whose remuneration is paid out of public money and such law states that those reductions are in the public interest, provision may also be made by law to make proportionate reductions to the remuneration of judges.
Any light to shed on this, Art?
For a start, the uk select the members of an inquiry by secret ballot.
They have over 600 MPs, so far more chance of a representative selection, and fewer careerists since so few of them can make it to cabinet.
They donât have the power to seize documents, or enter and search premises, as is being proposed for here. There is far greater separation of executive and legislative branches in both your examples.
The callely case is instructive because the inquiry team contained 2 barristers and was investigating a member of the oireachtais, the one area where they have sole jurisdiction, and they still made a pigâs ear of it.
Iâm voting no. The recent investigations into the abuse of children show that inquiries can be set up, finished and make findings of consequence without the need to make millionaires out of a half dozen senior counsel.
We donât need this amendment. Anytime we change the constitution, we are expected and entitled to consider the worst case scenario.
Imagine Michael McDowell beats John gormley to the last seat in the 07 election, and decides to investigate the centre for public inquiry? What a wonderful kangaroo court that would have been.
Reactionary approaches to extreme situations make for poor legislation. beef up the DPP and ODCE and donât turn TDs into amateur detectives. The big problem I have is they have specifically written the amendment to state that the committee of inquiry decides what is and is not a fair procedure. I.e. they decide which, if any, of my legal rights are required to be upheld.
Strays too far beyond their remit IMHO.
the line in the constitution at present is reminiscent of an upward only rent review clause.
dont see why they couldnt remove the clause re judges altogether and state that the renumeration of all public sector workers is decided upon by the government of the day.
the appointment of judges should be done by the law council or an independent body though. The government appointing judges is wide open to all forms of clientelism.
Seems like a reasonable argument.
Fintan OâToole is advocating a yes vote today:
FINTAN OâTOOLE
We have to decide that if youâre part of a toxic past, youâre not well placed to represent a decent future
THE IRISH motto: avoid disappointment, expect nothing. Usually, when a societyâs institutions implode, three things happen: revolution, disappointment, counter-revolution. There is a wave of change. Its results donât match the more utopian expectations. The old regime attempts to strike back.
In Ireland, it seems, weâve decided to short-circuit this process. Weâll move straight from the implosion to the counter-revolution, missing out entirely on the revolution and avoiding the disappointment. Who says weâre inefficient?
Two things are at stake on Thursday: our political culture and our political institutions. As things stand, the likelihood is that we will end up with a resounding statement that weâre happy both with our existing political culture and with the way our political institutions work.
Given the catastrophic failure of that culture and those institutions, this is quite astounding.
The political culture that got us where we are today was characterised by the dominance of Fianna FĂĄil, by a cynical populism in which voters are told whatever they want to hear, by a toxic intimacy between business and politics, by the encouragement of a business ethic that valued property over sustainable innovation, and by a lax attitude to legality. If you wanted to embody that culture, you would have to find someone who has boasted of his association with Charles Haughey, long after it was known that Haughey was a kleptocrat; who promises to create jobs even though he knows very well that he cannot do so; who has been up to his neck in the system of political fundraising that sidelined the interests of ordinary citizens; who rode the property boom and who has declared himself âhappyâ with transactions that were in flagrant breach of company law. Finding someone who ticks every one of those boxes is almost as amazing as the idea of making him president.
But perhaps equally extraordinary is the straight-faced intervention of a consortium of former attorneys general urging us to vote against the referendums on judgesâ pay and on Oireachtas inquiries.
Their opposition to the first of these referendums should in itself be a warning not to take their views on the second with too much gravity. But there is a good chance that they will in fact help to defeat the referendum on Oireachtas inquiries and therefore to stop the process of modest political reform before it has actually begun.
Now, Iâm sure all of these men have acted out of a genuine sense of public duty. But three of them might have had the grace to point out that they could possibly have a little bit of a personal stake in the issue.
Peter Sutherland was criticised by the Dirt inquiry in relation to his role as chairman of Allied Irish Banks, and the experience is unlikely to have endeared him to the notion of Oireachtas inquiries. He also opposed the idea of an inquiry into the banking catastrophe (âWe need to look to the futureâ). Dermot Gleeson, as chairman of AIB through the years of madness (chairmanâs speech to the agm, April 2006: âAsset quality, thatâs to say the quality of our loans, is at a historically high levelâ), would certainly have been called before such an inquiry, had the Oireachtas been able to mount one. And Michael McDowell just might be called to account for one of the most spectacular wastages of public money, the âŹ45 million weâve so far spent on his grand prison project at Thornton Hall, which may never house a single prisoner.
The fact that such men oppose the referendum on Oireachtas inquiries (albeit for the purest of reasons) is not a bad argument in its favour.
A common theme in the votes on Thursday is the infantilisation of politics and politicians. Public contempt for the way politics has been conducted is entirely justified. But it translates, not into a demand for sweeping change, but into that old Irish fatalism: sure, what can you expect, arenât they all the same? Weâre locked in a vicious circle. We have very low expectations of politicians, so we donât let them do anything serious. And the fact that they donât do anything serious confirms that we were right to have contempt for them in the first place.
The other common theme is accountability. We donât do accountability. So weâre suckers for anyone who pops up from Fianna FĂĄil to tell us to forget the past and âlook to the futureâ â precisely what Peter Sutherland told us in relation to a banking inquiry.
Never mind that lack of accountability is precisely what has destroyed the lives of so many Irish people â in our culture, amnesia translates into optimism. Never mind the notion that if you donât deal with the culture that created the catastrophe, youâre doomed to repeat it.
We have to break these cycles some time. We have to decide that if youâre part of a toxic past, youâre not well placed to represent a decent future.
We have to stop having low expectations of politicians and then whingeing when they amply fulfil them. We have to risk disappointment by having some hope of real change.
I can see where heâs coming from as well. The one major benefit as I can see it would be the mechanism it creates for the public to demand answers when it wants them. I know people see it as giving more power to the Dail and it clearly does, but I think it gives more power to the public as well.
What has surprised me, and it was mentioned on Vincent Browne last night, is how little effort the government has put into supporting the amendment. The impression you get is that they are almost afraid this does get passed, as the prospect of full scale investigations into powerful people is something theyâre not at all comfortable with.
[quote=âWatch The Break, post: 629983â]
Seems like a reasonable argument.
[/quote]me or fintan?
I donât at all sit well with the idea that mcdowell, suds, gleeson, mammy oârourke and ronan mullen are on the same side of an argument as I am.
However, strip away the shoot the messenger arguments (not accusing you here), and the obvious need for efficient and effective public representatives, and youâre left with very little. Everybody else does it is not an argument for changing the constitution.
A lot of what is offered as justification for a yes vote can be easily accomplished in other ways.
When you focus on the text of the constitutional amendment alone, I can see little, bar the paragraph on fair procedures, to argue with. When you look at the enabling legislation that has been prepared should the referendum be passed, itâs a whole other story.
McDowell in his wildest dreams wouldnât think of trampling on civil liberties in such a fashion.
take a look at the small print http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2011/09/20110912headsofbill.pdf
no need to read the full 68 pages, a quick scan of the various headings should be enough to give the gist of whatâs on offer.
reform the dail, remove the whip system, have a constitutional referendum to allow more than 2 non-elected members of cabinet and remove the stipulation that the taoiseach, tanaiste and (most importantly) minister for finance must be TDs, and reduce the number of TDs drastically. all of these would, imho, be far more meaningful than this shoddy amendment.
what exactly would a populist stunt such as hauling seanie in front of biffo have achieved? spared biffo having to reconcile his cheque book and current account i suppose. these guys are incapable (ross and mathews excepted) of asking any useful questions of a financial nature. everybody remembers dick fuld at the senate committee. did it achieve anything that the bankruptcy proceedings didnât?
legislate in haste, repent at your leisure.
normally, id agree with fintan but hes wrong here, the simple fact is that tribunals, for the most part, investigated politicians. our houses are not nor are they seen to be bastions of honesty and impartiality. if the proper authorities i.e. gardau, odce, cab and the courts had been given free reign right from the off, we would have bankers in jail. there is prima facie evidence of serious breaches of company law by many of them and yet no charges. the main problem with corruption in this country is policitians either by accepting monies or being complicit through inaction. and these are the people you want to make findings of fact and determinations of whether fair procedures were followed
Listening to Gilmore tonight I very much get the impression the government wanted this to fail. No debate. No effort to sell it. Put on the same day as the presidential election. He looks fucking delighted. Heâs falling over himself to say that this means they canât have a banking inquiry anytime soon and the peopleâs decision is final. Iâd say theyâre thrilled that in one fell swoop they have got out of actually having to investigate the banks, and at the same time have a waterproof excuse for not doing so. Win win for the boys.
Spot on