STORMONT’S scrutiny committees are an essential part of the apparatus of government. They are supposed to hold ministers and their departments to account, examine legislation and investigate issues related to their remit.
Important they might be, but it is also true to say that their sessions rarely raise a flicker of attention from the general public.
There was, however, a great deal of interest in Wednesday afternoon’s session of the Executive Office committee. Anyone hoping for any more light to be shed on Sinn Féin’s evolving catastrophes will have been more confused after the meeting than they were before it started. All concerned appeared to go out of their way to make it as unedifying and puerile as possible, managing to create 45 minutes of sound and fury that ultimately signified nothing.
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First Minister Michelle O’Neill insisted she wanted to be “open and transparent”. She had a highly unusual way of demonstrating this. Ms O’Neill stonewalled questions around the Michael McMonagle scandal, who-knew-what-when about Niall Ó Donnghaile’s departure from the Seanad and Sinn Féin, and the idiotic vandalism of the Wallace Browne portrait in Belfast City Hall.
Ms O’Neill repeatedly said ‘legal advice’ restricted her answers and scolded various MLAs for going beyond the committee’s remit in their questions. None of this reflected a commitment to openness or transparency.
The first minister was ably facilitated by MLAs who were hopelessly ill prepared to ask questions designed to elicit any new information from their reluctant witness.
In the end, Ms O’Neill left the committee meeting amid a slanging match between Sinn Féin’s Carál Ní Chuilín and the DUP’s Brian Kingston, as chair Paula Bradshaw struggled to control proceedings. The whole thing was rather embarrassing.
It clearly should not be the case that a minister can simply dodge legitimate questions from MLAs. Relying upon legal advice as a get-out might seem to be a “clever device”, as Peter Robinson, a former first minister, might have put it, but to everyone else it just looks evasive. The inevitable conclusion is that there is more to hide.
When it comes to those sitting on assembly committees, it is not unreasonable for the public to expect elected representatives to be across their briefs, able to construct cogent questions and to behave with at least primary school levels of decorum.
Stormont’s unusual structures, particularly the requirement for mandatory coalition, mean assembly scrutiny committees won’t always have the same bite as those in the Dáil or at Westminster. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t strive to be more effective in the service of those - us, the public - for whom they work. On the evidence of Wednesday, our politicians have some way to go.
