The opening of the Rail Signalling Inquiry may have been overshadowed by the tragic events in America last week, but Sean Doherty and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport now have the bit firmly between their teeth. The hearings are under way and the six members of the subcommittee looking into how a £14 million (€17.78 million) contract ended up costing £50 million, are no doubt hoping their efforts will do for them what the Public Accounts Committee investigation into DIRT did for Jim Mitchell and his fellow TDs.
There are some similarities between the two inquiries - both are being covered on television - but there are also a number of significant differences which might put paid to any hopes of televisual glory being harboured by the committee members.
The most significant difference is the nature of the private sector witnesses that will appear before them. The Rail Signalling Committee can expect the state agencies such as CI╔ to roll over in the way they did for the PAC, but they are unlikely to have as easy a time from other witnesses as the PAC got from the commercial banks. Like the Revenue Commissioners before them, there is little that CI╔ or the Department of Public Enterprise can gain by not giving the committee members what they want. As a result you can expect to see over the coming days the ritualised humiliation of departmental officials and CI╔ executives by committee members doing their best Rumpole-of-the-Bailey impressions.
Don't expect, however, to see the private sector executives take the sort of treatment dished out by the PAC to senior bank executives. The banks clearly took the view that on balance it was better to let the PAC have its day in the sun and then move on. Mounting a legal challenge would have back-fired, given the nature of the evidence compiled against them by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The financial institutions would have looked like they were using the courts to avoid having to own up to their role in the non-collection of DIRT.
The companies and the executives facing the Rail Signalling Inquiry - including former East Telecom executives Mr Denis O'Brien and Mr Leslie Buckley - value their reputations. They have also indicated they will cooperate with the inquiry. But, unlike the banks that came before the PAC, it is hard to see factors that might weigh against them using legal options to ensure their reputations are not unfairly damaged by the way the inquiry goes about its legitimate business. Mr Doherty and his colleagues will have to tread carefully.
A high point in the theatrics planned by the inquiry will be the appearance of the current and former Ministers for Public Enterprise. Presumably they will be questioned about what they knew, when they knew it and hopefully what they did about it.
The incumbent Minister, Ms Mary O'Rourke will be called as will her two predecessors, Mr Alan Dukes and Mr Michael Lowry. If Mr Doherty and his colleagues really want to strike a blow for parliamentary power they would be well advised not to follow the example set by the PAC in this regard.
The PAC started its inquiry armed with a comprehensive report on the whole issue that had been prepared by the C&AG. The report showed that a series of finance ministers were made aware by senior civil servants of the abuse of non-resident accounts but appeared to have done little about it. None of the ministers who appeared before the committee was tackled by their peers over the issue. There was none of the grandstanding or TV lawyer style questioning that characterised the interrogation of the bank executives and hapless civil servants. Instead it was left to the legal advisers to the inquiry to quiz the ministers - who included the Taoiseach, and Mr Ray MacSharry, Mr Albert Reynolds and Mr John Bruton - in a respectful and professional manner.
Similarly, the final PAC report pulled few punches when it came to castigating the banks and state agencies. The finance ministers, who under our system are responsible for the actions of their departments and agencies, got off lightly. There was no detailed analysis of what they knew and what they did about the problem, just a statement that there was no evidence of a lack of political will to face up to the issue. The failure of the committee to apportion a degree of responsibility for what went wrong to any of the ministers was not really surprising. Clearly the Fine Gael back benchers who make up the committee are not going to allow the Fianna Fail members score points against senior members of their party and vice versa.
As a consequence Oireachtas committees appear fundamentally flawed as a mechanism for investigating the actions of Government and as a viable alternative to judicial tribunals. The Rail Signalling Inquiry has the chance to show this does not have to be the case.
jmcmanus@irish-times.ie
