The leader of the Seanad, Mr Donie Cassidy, said yesterday he would arrange to have a debate on the remarks by the High Court Taxing Master, Mr James Flynn, on the running of tribunals. He said it would take place in the coming weeks.
Mr Maurice Manning, the Fine Gael leader in the House, had said earlier that public representatives needed to know the reason for the "odd" behaviour of the Taxing Master in two recent political cases.
Raising what he called the bizarre and unprecedented remarks of Master Flynn on tribunals, Mr Manning said tribunals were established by the Oireachtas in the public interest and there was an established way in which they went about their business. Master Flynn's comments had cast a doubt over the probity and certainty of the effectiveness of their running. The use of words such as "Frankenstein" did nothing but convey an impression that there was something wrong with these tribunals. He believed that the House should have an opportunity to examine why these remarks had been made.
"This was the second occasion on which Mr Flynn has been found behaving oddly in a political case. Only a couple of weeks ago, a High Court judge overturned a judgment he had made involving the De Rossa case, and the judge expressed concern at the way in which the judgment had been made. So, I think we need to know a lot more about what is happening."
Mr Manning said that a motion which he and Mr John Connor had tabled would provide a suitable vehicle for having such a debate. It called on the Seanad to note the article in the Bar Review on the difficulties inherent in tribunal procedures and sought a wider debate on this subject.
Mr Paul Coghlan (FG) described Master Flynn's comments as "something of a broadside on our democracy, coming from someone in a privileged position whom many of us would have thought would have known better".
Mr David Norris (Ind) said he shared Mr Manning's concern over the remarks of the taxing master. "I'd just like to reflect on what can possibly have happened to the separation of powers, which I thought was a clear principle in public life; that a member of the judiciary or a quasi-member of the judiciary could make these kind of strictures on the Oireachtas and its functions is very odd indeed."
Mr Frank Chambers (FF) said he supported the call for a debate. If elected representatives read some of the columns in the national newspapers, notably one in yesterday's Irish Times, in relation to tribunals and if they were open and honest about what the public considered the tribunals to be, he believed they might form a different opinion on their function and their end product.
It was vital that any debate should be constructive and lead to better accountability in a process which should be fair to everybody. "The piece by John Waters today [Tuesday] is worth reading because it is fair to say that the tribunals have reached a momentum of their own that is unstoppable."