AN OIREACHTAS committee would require a court order to enter the home of somebody it was investigating under the terms of next month’s referendum, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin said yesterday.
He said that “taking that very difficult decision to enter somebody’s house, maybe to get access to a computer record or something like that . . . you would need to convince a judge of the court”.
The Minister said “that would be a very high hurdle to achieve, but it would not necessarily be a criminal matter . . . it might be a requirement to get information that is really important to discerning the truth of the matter under investigation”.
He said the full details of the legislation covering the amendment would be published within a matter of weeks.
The amendment, promised in the programme for government, is to reverse the Supreme Court’s Abbeylara judgment halting an Oireachtas inquiry into the shooting dead of John Carthy at his home in Abbeylara, Co Longford, during a stand-off with gardaí in 2000.
Speaking on the RTÉ Radio programme This Week,the Minister said that where the reputation or good name of a witness was on the line, it would be reasonable to assume that they would have legal representation.
Mr Howlin said that a report from the Ombudsman or the Comptroller and Auditor General could be the basis for an inquiry.
In circumstances where a matter had not been investigated by an office, it would be possible for the newly formed Investigations, Oversight and Petitions committee to appoint an investigator, he added.
Mr Howlin also said he was confident that members of the Oireachtas had the same integrity as members of parliament elsewhere.
“Twelve of our European sister countries underpin parliamentary inquiries by constitutional provision and most of the rest do it by law,” he added.
