ABSTRACT

The ability of public representatives to intervene in the administration directly has its effects upon administrative procedures and decision-making. The extension of the activities of parliamentary representatives to kind of matter and to attempting to influence decisions before they are made goes beyond what is necessary or proper to enable the Oireachtas or local authority to oversee the conduct of the administration in order to further the legitimate interests of individual constituents. Surveillance and control of the administration are effected, firstly, by parliamentary procedures, such as they are, which Deputies and Senators can use to question or criticize at both a macro level and a micro level. The traditional forms of control over administrative action in Ireland derive from British practice, involving principles and devices originating in the seventeenth century. Legal control was effected through the ordinary courts, whose main concern was the enforcement of legal rights and obligations, not the fulfilment of public policy.