Changes to Oireachtas committees

FIVE OIREACHTAS committees will undergo shake-ups this week in a tacit admission that the system put in place by the Government has not been fully successful.

Some months after coming into power last year, the Fine Gael and Labour Coalition announced it was reducing the number of committees from 26 to 16.

In previous Dáil terms, almost every government department was “marked” by an Oireachtas committee. However, under reforms announced last June, the number of “departmental” committees was substantially reduced, with some responsible for tracking up to three departments. This led to some committees having up to 27 members and having a huge burden of responsibility.

The changes which will come into effect this week will see the transport brief being transferred from the environment committee to a new committee, which will also oversee communications and energy.

Similarly, the committee on social protection and education will no longer have responsibility for enterprise and jobs, which will have its own committee. There will also be a new committee on agriculture and food.

The changes will result in the same net number of committees, with the Good Friday agreement committee being merged with the British-Irish parliamentary committee. Elections will take place to appoint the chairs of the new committees, but in effect there will be no change in personnel, although all will have new responsibilities.

The most significant change will be for Labour TD Joanna Tuffy, who will move from the Belfast Agreement committee to the new committee overseeing education and social protection.

A Government TD who is chairman of one committee, speaking on the basis of anonymity, said that the configuration agreed last year was always going to be problematic.

“If you took away the optics it wasn’t going to work. I said from the start we would have to come back and draw it up again. There is a big difference between reductionism and reform. It was just too unwieldy.”

Fianna Fáil whip Seán Ó Fearghail expressed similar views. “They did damage to the effectiveness of committees by trying to deal with three departments with committees of 27. It did not make for effective working.”