PAC is like ‘lion’s den’ says judge
A SUPREME Court judge has likened the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (Pac) to a ‘lion’s den’ for people like Angela Kerins and has asked if it is fair to deny all legal redress to someone in her position.
The former Rehab Group boss must now await the outcome of her challenge to the right of the public spending watchdog to have questioned her in February 2014 about her €240,000 salary, potential bonuses, company Audi A4, and alleged trips by helicopter.
Ms Kerins claims that the ‘intrusive’ seven-hour session pushed her to the brink of suicide. She sued the Pac and the State for damages in the High Court last year but lost, and this week took her case to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, at the conclusion of a four-day hearing, Chief Justice Frank Clarke, sitting with six other senior judges, said it was an ‘important and difficult’ case.
Earlier, Maurice Collins SC, for the State, urged the seven judges to decide the case ‘at the level of principle unaffected by individual sympathy’ for Ms Kerins.
He argued that the Supreme Court was being asked to do ‘something momentous’ and award damages against members of the Pac.
He added that Ms Kerins was ‘at all times aware she was being asked to attend on a voluntary basis’.
When challenged by the judges about whether the ‘absolute’ right of freedom of speech for TDs in the Dáil and Seanad extends to committee hearings outside of those chambers, Mr Collins said: ‘The whole point of the protection is lost if it’s subject to qualification.’
But Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan said that if the court rules in the State’s favour and rejects Ms Kerins’s case, then ‘they [committee participants like Ms Kerins] are going into a lion’s den where, regardless of what is said to them – or about them – they have no legal redress before the courts.’
Mr Collins replied: ‘Yes, I do say the citizen has no remedy in those circumstances, there is no remedy.’
Later, Mr Justice John MacMenamin put it to Mr Collins the State was therefore contending that ‘if you turn up to the Pac, you’re fair game,’ adding: ‘The consequences of the argument you’re making are very serious for our democracy.’
The Pac is arguing it was ‘legitimately investigating’ if the State was ‘getting value for money’.
THE Supreme Court action taken by former Rehab chief Angela Kerins concluded yesterday, with Mr Justice Frank Clarke reserving judgment and saying the case was ‘important and difficult’. Ms Kerins is seeking damages arising from a 2014 Dáil Public Accounts Committee hearing – during which, she claims, robust questioning about her stewardship of the organisation led her to suffer loss of reputation and loss of employment.
So, yes, it is important and difficult, but in many ways also quite simple. All successful democracies have established, and maintain, the fundamental principle of absolute privilege – that is, a politician in the parliament building can say anything without fear. In turn, politicians are in that parliament only because we put them there. We elected them, and endorsed their right to say what they say without the threat of retaliation or prosecution.
If they go too far, it might seem harsh or unfair to an individual under scrutiny, but if we were to take the opposite path, it would mean that someone else, someone unelected, would gain control of what they were allowed to discuss.
As we know, that simply would mean the rich and powerful could silence public representatives and, by extension, jeopardise our right to see public servants and the bosses of publicly funded bodies held to account.
Safeguards already exist. If a politician’s own colleagues think he or she has gone too far, they can publicly criticise that person and even move for formal censure. If the public feels a politician has treated someone unfairly, and think they would not like to be exposed to such rudeness or inappropriate questioning themselves, they have the ultimate safeguard in their gift – they can simply choose not to reelect that person.
Removing or even diluting absolute Oireachtas privilege would place unacceptable limits on politicians and would deeply damage our democracy. It would be a black day for Ireland.