VERY OFTEN House Committees operate as little more than a talking shop, or – to put it more politely – as a forum, in which deputies can express their views on issues of public interest. A committee meeting is often just like a studio debate, having no other purpose than for deputies to comment on a topic in the news in the hope that their views will be reported subsequently by the media.
Two ‘talking shop’ examples were given earlier in the week. The House’s communications committee discussed the problem of parking in spaces designated for disabled drivers, while the human rights committee talked about the activities of groups of organised beggars. Neither committee contributed anything meaningful, although we were informed that professional beggars had their own territory and behaved ‘like gangsters’.
The good news was that for the last year the interior ministry was preparing a bill for dealing with organised beggars. At the other committee deputies spoke about the lack of consideration and sensitivity for the disabled and warned that if the relevant ministry did not tackle the problem of drivers parking in spaces for the disabled they would pass a law introducing wheel-clamping for offenders.
A law for wheel-clamping could be passed but where would the police find the wheel clamps in order to implement the law? And would it not be a self-defeating measure, considering that a clamped car would occupy a disabled parking space for even longer than the inconsiderate driver intended? But we should not be asking too many questions because deputies were just expressing views about issues of public interest in the House talking shop.
It is much easier work than reading through the bills they have to approve and an explanation for why so many laws passed by the House are incomplete or contain glaring omissions.
A good way to penalise misbehaving fans
THE IDEA of imposing a surcharge on football match tickets in order to cover part of the policing cost is a very good one. The cost for policing matches this year reached €3.2 million and the sports authorities discussed the possibility of passing it on to the spectators through a ticket surcharge.
In an ideal world, the home club should have picked up the policing tab, but as the clubs are constantly short of cash, the authorities thought that the fans could pay for the police. Presumably the surcharge would be on tickets for high-risk matches which required a heavy police presence and not be imposed indiscriminately. It would be grossly unfair for fans of the smaller clubs, who never cause trouble, to have to pay the surcharge to watch their team.
The higher priced tickets would be a good way of penalising the clubs whose fans consistently misbehave and require heavy policing for their matches.
