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ABSTRACT
How successful are attempts to strengthen the capacity of national legislatures to better perform their law-making function? In response to executive dominance, some legislatures have attempted organisational reform to strengthen their capacity. One such institutional innovation is pre-legislative scrutiny (PLS) – a process whereby a parliamentary committee scrutinises draft bills and reports back with observations and/or recommendations to the ministry sponsoring the legislation. PLS is designed to enhance the capacity of parliament to influence government-sponsored legislation. We measure the impact of PLS on legislative outcomes by conducting a content analysis of PLS reports and subsequent Government bills introduced to the Irish Parliament between 2011 and 2016. This analysis is supplemented with an in-depth case study of legislative change around gender recognition. The mixed method analysis suggesting that PLS can have a substantive impact on proposed government legislation. PLS serves to strengthen the role of parliament in law-making, with positive, and arguably generalisable, consequences for stakeholder engagement, parliamentarians and the quality of legislation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 We use the terms assemblies, parliaments, and legislatures interchangeably throughout this paper.
2 PLS can be contrasted with other forms of legislative scrutiny, including examination of a Bill as it progresses through the law-making process. Post-legislative scrutiny involves the scrutiny of enacted legislation to determine the degree to which the objectives of the legislation were and are being achieved.
3 On the other hand, in the vast majority of parliaments bills are firstly referred to the relevant parliamentary committee which deliberates on the bill, frequently holding hearings and inviting written submissions. It then sends a report to parliament. See Oireacthas Library and Research Service (2014, p. 6) for a summary of PLS’s application in Europe and in select parliaments from the Westminster tradition (pp. 7–8).
4 In the UK Parliament, committee work is divided between permanent committees (which, broadly speaking, shadow government Departments) and bills committees (which may be formed to scrutinise a specific piece of proposed legislation at the committee stage). As such, the committee scrutinising proposed legislation is not the committee that otherwise oversees the activities of government departments. Moreover, the UK Parliament tends to an adversarial government-opposition culture which may make it more difficult for committees to act in a non-partisan fashion (Martin & Whitaker, Citation2019).
5 Standing Order Dáil Eireann 146A (as amended).
6 The Business Committee is a cross-party committee chaired by the Ceann Comhairle (presiding officer) of the Dáil (lower House) which agrees the business of the Dáil. It was established as a reform in the 32nd Dáil.
7 Source: Authors Interviews; , Oireachtas Library and Research Service (Citation2016).
8 Oxford English Dictionary.
9 This is a practical, methodological decision. A further study would be necessary to examine the extent to which views articulated during the hearings/submissions and highlighted, but not advocated necessarily, by the committee affect the subsequent Bill.
10 We were unable to reach conclusions regarding two PLS cases: The Retention of Records Bill and the Health Information and Patient Safety Bill. The relevant committee did engage in PLS, but no report was produced. We were further unable to locate any communication arising from the PLS process between the committee and the relevant Minister. As such, it is not possible to evaluate the recommendations – if any – or the impact of any recommendations. In both cases, no Bill was published during the lifetime of the 31st Dáil, meaning we cannot measure the difference between the General Scheme and drafted Bill.
11 By committee, the breakdown for PLS cases for which a Bill was not subsequently published are as follows: Justice, Defence and Equality (7), Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht (3), and Health and Children (1).
12 Agriculture, Food and the Marine undertook one completed PLS, and with three of the four recommendations accepted, this gives a headline acceptance rate of 75%.
13 This weak negative correlation fails to reach conventional levels of statistical significant. The t-value equals −0.14 and the 95% confidence interval includes zero (−0.63, .55).
14 Interview B.
15 We use the gender-neutral term ‘chairperson’ in contrast to the Oireachtas practice of using the word ‘chairman.’.
16 Interview A, Interview B, Interview E, Interview F, and Interview L.
17 Interview D.
18 Interview B, Interview F, and Interview L.
19 Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection (Citation2014, p. 4).
20 Dáil Debates, Friday, 9 May 2014.
21 Interview C.
22 Dáil Debates, Friday, 9 May 2014.
23 Oireachtas Library & Research Service, Citation2015.
24 Interview A.
25 Oireachtas Library & Research Service, Citation2015.
26 Interview C.
27 Available at: https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Education-Reports/Being-LGBT-in-School.pdf.
28 Interview D.
29 Oireachtas Library & Research Service (Citation2015).
30 Interview C and Interview D.
31 Interview D.
32 Gender Recognition Bill 2014: Committee Stage. Wednesday, 17 June 2015
33 Interview A and Interview B.
34 Dáil Standing Orders 2016 (Consolidated Version January 2019). Standing Order 146A