Today's meeting of the Dail's Public Accounts Committee marks an historic development in the parliamentary system in this State. The committee will hold its first formal hearing into the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General's investigation into the administration of the Deposit Interest Retention Tax and related matters between 1986 and 1998 armed with the proper legal tools to do its job.
For the first time in almost thirty years, since the In re Haughey case taken by Mr Charles Haughey's brother, Jock, in 1971 scuppered the Dail's attempt to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the missing £100,000 grant-in-aid for Northern Ireland, the committee has equipped itself with full powers of privilege and compellability to conduct a High Court-type investigation.
Politicians in successive governments have nobody to blame but themselves for the delay in awarding the Dail's premier committee the instruments to allow for proper public accountability. It was only in 1995, after the costly and long-running Beef Tribunal and the attempt by another Dail committee to investigate, but make no findings on, the events surrounding the fall of the Fianna Fail/Labour Coalition in 1994, that the Rainbow Coalition moved in earnest to give real powers to committees.
The Bill to compel witnesses to attend and provide privilege to the utterances of those appearing before a Dail committee was first introduced in 1995. It was extensively re-drafted by the Finance and General Affairs Committee, then chaired by Mr Jim Mitchell, over the following two years. And, even then, Mr Mitchell who now chairs the Public Accounts Committee, had to ask the Dail to pass further legislation to enable the Comptroller and Auditor General to investigate the non-resident DIRT accounts so that the committee could be empowered to make findings.
For all of that, the Dail's Public Accounts Committee now has the constitutional and legal powers to direct witnesses from the financial institutions, the Revenue Commissioners, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance to appear before it to account for one of the biggest tax scandals of recent years. It will sit in sub-committee form today. Its six members have been put through a rigorous test to avoid conflict of interest. They have to operate without the party whip during the sittings.
The committee's investigation into the administration of DIRT, which will be held in public sessions over the month of September, marks a significant step forward for the parliamentary system. It has the potential to restore public accountability to the floor of Dail Eireann, the place where it rightly belongs but where it has seldom been seen to reside in recent years. Furthermore, if it proves successful, the Dail's committee system could become the forum for investigations into matters of major public interest in the future, thereby removing the need for costly tribunals of inquiry. Moriarty and Flood could be the last tribunals into politically-related matters.
As the parliamentary system moves, albeit belatedly, to re-assert its authority, some plaudits are due to Mr Jim Mitchell as the TD who, more than anyone else in the Oireachtas, painstakingly developed the legislative changes which will make it possible for a Dail committee to conduct a fully-fledged investigation into what would seem to be systematic tax evasion.