EVIDENCE TO the committee investigating Senator Ivor Callely’s expenses will be given under oath at public hearings and the inquiry will be based on the presumption of innocence.
Senators have been circulated with a memorandum of procedures on the conduct of the quasi-judicial investigation by the Committee on Members’ Interests of Seanad Éireann, which holds its first public session at 10am tomorrow.
The committee will be chaired by Seanad Cathaoirleach Pat Moylan. Its other members are Dan Boyle (Green Party), Fine Gael leader in the Seanad Frances Fitzgerald, Senators Camillus Glynn and Denis O’Donovan (Fianna Fáil), Alex White (Labour) and Senator Joe O’Toole (Ind).
Seanad sources said the inquiry rules had been worked out in conjunction with a parliamentary legal adviser and would have a fourfold basis: 1) The provisions of the Ethics in Public Office Acts 1995-2001; 2) Seanad bylaws and standing orders; 3) the principles of natural justice; 4) the presumption of innocence.
Mr Callely, who has since resigned the Fianna Fáil whip, has been asked to explain his €81,015 travel expenses and why he claimed for the 370km journey between Leinster House and his holiday home in Kilcrohane, west Cork, instead of from his residence in Clontarf, Dublin, over a two-year period.
Mr Callely will be afforded the opportunity to call witnesses on his behalf. He has said he felt “rejected” following the loss of his Dáil seat in Dublin in 2007 and preferred to stay in west Cork. He subsequently entered the Seanad as a Taoiseach’s nominee.
The memorandum states that the committee may “invite or direct in writing” any person, apart from Mr Callely, to attend before it “and to produce any document or thing in his or her possession or power as specified”.
The investigation may also “arrange for the examination of a person in or outside the State by a member of the committee or the committee’s legal representative”.
At present, the only witness scheduled to appear is Mr Callely himself, but it may be the case that members of the Leinster House staff will be asked to appear in order to clarify, for example, the rules and procedures applying to making expenses claims.
Mr Callely or his legal representative may cross-examine any such witnesses called by the committee which, in turn, may cross-examine any witnesses called by the Senator himself.
At the conclusion of the evidence, a closing submission may be made by or on behalf of Mr Callely. “Thereafter the committee will meet in private for the purposes of deliberating on the evidence before them and any submissions made.”