2025-12-17

Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 have been ruled out of order as they are in conflict with the principles of the Bill.

I will speak to section 2. The point needs to be made, as I have done virtually every year, that there is no secret service and yet every year there is an Estimate set down for €2 million to be issued to a secret service that supposedly does not exist but I will come back to that. The sum of €2 million is not huge. The fact is that all of the other Estimates go before a committee. This Estimate now falls under the Minister for public expenditure. It used to be the Minister for Finance. Yet, none of the Ministers have any responsibility for the Estimate. When I have put down questions over the years, what has happened is that my questions have been ruled out of order on the basis that the Minister has no official responsibility to Dáil Éireann for this matter under Standing Order 44. One of them was to ask both the Ministers for Finance and public expenditure the funding allocated to Vote 15, which in the past was Vote 22. Since 2011 the money is returned to the Exchequer each year. They are simple things. Normally, under housekeeping rules, you have to account for the money spent. The last time I got any kind of substantial answer was when Brian Cowen held the position of Minister for Finance. He listed all of the amounts of funding given and the outrun. Nowadays, €2 million is spent and there is no accountability. He said in a reply to me in 2005 that the allocation for the secret service - Vote 12 - for the years in question was set out in a table and that it was not the practice to divulge information or explanations relating to expenditure on this Vote. I did a bit of digging and it has been practice in the past, just not recent practice, to divulge what this money is for. In 2009, it was said that the purpose of the secret service Vote was to retain the information which was necessary for the security of this country and that given the sensitivity associated with a Vote of this nature, information relating to its operation is not made public. I am not looking for a breakdown but somebody has to be accountable. It is the same as An Garda Síochána, which has an Accounting Officer. There is no Accounting Officer here. Given that a new security committee was set up, I would have thought that this would have been one of the areas that would have fallen to it, that it would have said the €2 million was agreed, that it would take the Minister at his word and that it was happy the €2 million was spent appropriately, or not. That would have been up to the members to discuss. Gay Mitchell, when he was foreign affairs Minister, asked that the Irish secret service should be monitored by a committee of the Oireachtas. It is going back over the years. If you go back to 1922, that is when the funding started. In 1927, it was £6,700. It was not a huge sum but if you look at the figures and the account of that, Mr. Ernest Blythe stated that, "The purposes of the Secret Service Vote are the obtaining of information which is requisite for the security of the country and which cannot be obtained openly." That is exactly what has been said to me in recent years. He continued that: The amounts are paid out on the order of the Minister for Finance at the request of another Minister. The Minister who is responsible for the requisition is required, at the end of the financial year, to give a certificate in the following form: [This does not happen now so far as I know.] "I hereby certify that the amount actually expended by me or under my direction for secret service in the year ended ----- was so much and that the balance in my hands on the 31st day of March was so much, and I further solemnly declare that the interests of the public service required that the payments should be made out of the Service Fund and that they were properly so made." That is the form of certificate that used to be issued and was the exact same form issued by the British secret service since 1888 when its secret service was set up in London after the IRB attacked its offices. We still continue the British tradition. However, even in Westminster there is a security committee that MI5 and MI6 are responsible to and they are held accountable in terms of funding. The amount in 1927 was £4,000 but the amount in 1922-1923 was £220,000. That is the figure that was voted and £118,000 was spent. We can guess what that was because that was the year in which the State was executing republicans as part of the Civil War. In 1923, the amount dropped to £50,000 and it continued to drop. In recent years, it has increased and in more recent years it has stayed at €2 million without going up or down in any shape or form. The question is: when will this Vote be before the Dáil or a committee so that somebody has to give even a vague account and say what it is for rather than what is happening now where it is even more secretive than before?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I know it is something he has raised on many other occasions in relation to the Appropriation Bill. In terms of the wider practice, it is a Vote listed under my Department and it is also a Vote that can be used by other Government Departments in the context of the fund during the particular year. It is the only Vote operated in which the Oireachtas has waived its right to know precisely what the money has been spent on. It has always been the custom and practice not to disclose what Departments sought funds from this particular Vote. The appropriation account for the secret service, as has been said in previous years, is also audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Oireachtas votes a specific sum annually for this Vote and the Comptroller and Auditor General plays an important role with the Secretary General in terms of the overall financial control of it. There is obviously practice around why that is the case. If an Oireachtas committee wants to have an informed debate about the Vote in terms of future practice or tradition, that is obviously something the Department can have engagement on as part of the overall Appropriation Bill. We are simply seeking to continue what has been advanced in previous years. The fact that the C and AG plays an auditing role is also important in that context.

I would welcome the debate because it is the only Vote that is specific and set apart. It does not fall under the Garda Síochána Vote, the Defence Forces Vote, as you would presume, or even the Minister for justice's Vote. It falls specifically under finance or, of late, public expenditure, which begs the question as to who stands over this expenditure. It has not increased in recent years. It is €2 million. As I said, in the bigger scheme of things, it is not a huge amount of money. If the Minister came in here next year and increased it fivefold, there would still be no accountability for that other than at the Cabinet. Somebody would have to go to the Cabinet and explain or just say, "Sorry, hard luck, it is common not to ask questions about this", and that would be it. That is what is being asked of us here. In the past, we did not have a security committee. When the committee was being set up in this Dáil term, the idea most people had was it would look at issues such as internal and external threats to the State, as security committees elsewhere do. In the past, it was also said this allocation was money for informers. If that was the case, it would sit with An Garda Síochána, which would have to account for and manage it. It was said it was money to obtain information, but it does not define it beyond that. I am not going to labour this point much longer, but debates in the past looked at whether it was appropriate to have a fund in times when there was no longer an emergency. There might be some logic to having one in the middle of the Civil War, from the Free State and Cumann na nGaedheal point of view, but there did not seem to be a logic to it in the years thereafter. However, those who gave out about this fund in the early 1920s embraced it thereafter, even though questions have been asked by Members on different sides of the House. I am not opposed to this Vote. The issue I have is with the accountability end of it. If the Minister is willing, he should schedule a debate on it in committee and I will do the same. I will ask my party's representative on the Committee of Public Accounts or the public expenditure committee about this. The Minister said the Comptroller and Auditor General audits this Vote, but it does not jump out in any of the C and AG's reports. He might audit it but it is not ever accounted for and his reports go through every other detail with a fine-tooth comb. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General is unable to print any information regarding this expenditure. We have had issues before the public accounts committee involving hundreds of thousands of euro, whereas this Vote amounts to €2 million every year. There is no outrun, which used to be the case in the past, there is no return of funding and there is no demand for a Revised Estimate in the middle of the year. How come, very conveniently every year, €2 million is asked for and spent?

I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh. My understanding is that when auditing the secret service Vote, the Comptroller and Auditor General does not examine it in detail or comment on it for the Oireachtas. Instead, his office departs from the usual certification regarding the correctness of accounts and simply certifies that the amount shown in the account is supported by respective certification by the responsible Ministers. That is accepted as part of the wider discharging of responsibilities. The statement of internal financial control is signed by the Secretary General in my Department, who is the Accounting Officer for this particular Vote. That reflects the process and practice that have existed for a long time. As I said, my Department has a very confined role in relation to the expenditure of the Vote. It extends only as far as agreeing to the annual Estimate and then the respective spending authorities certify and ensure it is processed in line with established procedures. That is the backdrop. There is obviously wider custom of practice as regards why this is the case. It is for any Oireachtas committee to question or probe that, and I respect that.

Usually, committees do not deal with Votes unless they are specifically in the remit-----

The wider structure of the Vote is still a matter-----

When committees are formed, they are specifically informed of what Vote they are responsible for. This Vote does not appear in any of the committees' remits. That is the problem. The Minister or whoever else can say the Minister has no responsibility to the Dáil on this matter, and that is correct, but Ministers also have no responsibility to any committee on this matter and, technically, no committee can take on this issue because it is one of those strange ones. In some ways, it has to go to Cabinet or somebody else has to raise the flag about it. It is a minor issue if we need to have a fund, slush fund or whatever else to assist. The security of the State is not dependent on €2 million, so it is in some ways meaningless if that is what it is. I will leave it at that but I hope I will not be arguing with the Minister in the last days before Christmas next year. However, I will continue to do this until, at some stage, some oversight is had beyond a Minister nodding to the Comptroller and Auditor General saying, "Everything is fine, don't worry about it. I have no receipts but that is the way it is."

I move amendment No. 3: In page 4, line 26, after “citied” to insert “as Acht Leithghabhála 2025 or, in the English language,”. Only this week, we had President Catherine Connolly launch a multilingual dictionary. It was a fantastic day. We now have a groundbreaking new dictionary that is accessible online. When the Minister was the Minister with responsibility for the Gaeltacht, he part-funded the research into this through Foras na Gaeilge. I do not think anybody is critical of that but when you look up the meaning of "leithreas" in the dictionary online, through foclóir.ie, it states: 1. Babhla mór a bhfuil suíochán air a bhfuil poll ann, a bhíonn nasctha le córas uisce. Úsáideann tú an leithreas nuair a bhíonn do mhún nó do chac le déanamh agat. 2. Seomra ar leith i dteach nó i bhfoirgneamh, nó both beag ar leith i suíomh oscailte, ar féidir le daoine dul chuig an leithreas ann Sin na mínithe ar leithreas. Má lorgaíonn tú an focal "leithreasa", ní ann dó, ach tá leithreasú, leithghabháil agus leithreas - "funds set aside" nó "leithreasaí buiséid". The point I made before was that, in some ways, people say it is a piss-take but it is not. It is not in common parlance. Part of producing a dictionary is trying to ensure the words being used are being used correctly. That is why I have said, not just in this amendment but in the past, that it should be the "Acht Leithghabhála 2025". In the past, when I raised this, it has been said that this is the tradition and we will keep using the words, but words go out of fashion. We have done it with other words that were common at one stage, such as the Aliens Act. We do not call people aliens anymore. If it has been pointed out that this is not a word in common parlance or is no longer used, we should change it. To do so would not take away from the Bill. We need to change the Title to something that is more accessible and also does not give a double meaning.

I am informed "Acht Leithghabhála" is not the correct citation in Irish for the Bill. What has been used since 1923, which is the Short Title of the Bill, is the correct one. More generally, I defer to the Deputy's interest and knowledge of the language. When I was Minister for the Gaeltacht, he showed a interest in and passion for it, and I respect that. We obviously have a thread here, whereby this has been in consistent use for 100 years. I am told the Deputy proposed a similar amendment in 2023 and the Department engaged at the time with the Department with responsibility for the Gaeltacht on what was deemed to be the correct Title. The position I have been told, as of today is what we have said is the correct translation. I am not against having a broader engagement with the Deputy or others outside of here and with the Department of the Gaeltacht as well. If it is correct that it should be updated for the future I would be very open to that. Language evolves, as do Titles to legislation. For today, that is the position I have been given but it is something I would be happy to engage on in the context of future legislation. I respect the fact that the Deputy is more knowledgeable about it than I am. This has been checked in the past and is something that we are respectfully continuing this year. In the context of what the Deputy has said and given the ongoing work with Foras na Gaeilge, the new Uachtarán and within the language community, the Government should always be open to that engagement and taking an informed view with further inputs and I would be open to that.

That would be a useful engagement in terms of parliamentary language. There has been a campaign over the years called plain English. We should have the same for Irish, where we make our legislation as accessible to the public as possible. Where there are words that have double meanings we should put in a different word. That has implications obviously in law. We have to make sure that the word can stand up and that we specify in legislation what it was previously known as and so on. In the future especially, we will be able to address issues like that because everything will be available on computer. The line between this year's and next year's legislation will be a lot easier than pulling down different bits off the shelf. Maybe in the future that can be looked at but it not just this legislation as there is a load of legislation where words, which are not in common practice - they might be correct - make it difficult for people to understand our legislation in Irish or in English. The legislation is sometimes gobbledygook and it is even more gobbledygook if a Title is put on it that can be totally misconstrued. In this case, I believe that is one of those. The vast majority of Irish speakers would not have a clue what it meant other than presuming that it is a toilet Bill. It is not and we know that. We know what we are discussing. It would be good if that can be taken on board when people are looking at miscellaneous provisions Bills and stuff like that. Often that is where we can correct mistakes that have been there over years or where people have identified problems. If we started using the Title 100 years ago, that does not mean that it was necessarily correct. One hundred years ago, there was a big debate about whether the Free State would be termed "Saorstát" or whether a republic was a saorstát. There was a big debate about the Titles because they were not common parlance. The words used for our parliamentary procedures all came from Westminster or a coiste téarmaíochta was set up to identify words that may have been used in the past, a couple of hundred years before that, and which might relate to those. They might not necessarily ever have been used in the form they are now being used in, but they were appropriated at the time. This is no different than most people using "carr", rather than "gluaisteán" in Irish, for car. The word the coiste téarmaíochta came up with was gluaisteán but most people do not use that. The question is how should we reflect that in law. I will not delay any further on this. I will withdraw the amendment, based on the fact that we will try to have a discussion about this in terms of terminology and legislation.

Amendment No. 4 in the name of Deputy Ó Snodaigh has been ruled out of order as it is in conflict with the principles of the Bill.

The Bill, which is certified to be a Money Bill in accordance with Article 22.2.1° of the Constitution, will be sent to the Seanad.