THE Fianna Fail spokesman on the environment, Mr Noel Dempsey, has criticised the Government for appointing an ad hoc commission to supervise the forthcoming referendum on bail.
Mr Dempsey said that the commission should be established on a statutory basis, as proposed in a Private Member's Bill he had placed on the Dail Order Paper. He said that the commission should be composed of seven, rather than three, members.
Arguing that the announcement on behalf of the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, had met the letter, but not the spirit, of the Supreme Court judgment in the McKenna case, he said that he would raise the matter in the Dail this week.
He would be anxious to ensure that the commission would have the power to decide what companies received advertising contracts. He was also concerned that it should have the right to decide on the amount of information to be made available to the public.
The Government should not be allowed to strictly control expenditure or the supply of public information, he said. If such a precedent was set in the case of bail, which was a relatively simple issue, a future government might seek to deal with complex issues, such as neutrality, common defence and security, in the same way, Mr Dempsey said.