Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Bertók. I cannot see him at the moment but I will try to talk to his disembodied voice. I am new and trying to navigate my way around the parameters of the debate on the issue. It might be useful for us to see some contrasts between how various countries deal with some of the issues of how one balances different competing imperatives. Broadly speaking, I am in favour of the fullest possible transparency when it comes to influencing decision making of Government, local authorities, State bodies and in particular commercial interests. One has that imperative, but at a grassroots level, following on from the previous speaker, at a local constituency level if we were to register every time constituents engaged with public officials in order to influence them it would be so burdensome that no constituent would ever do it and no public representative would do anything else other than fill out forms. I understand the distinction Mr. Bertók made between a public representative who is representing a specific commercial interest and one who is just representing constituents. There are many grey areas.

To take one issue as an example, many small businesses are in serious trouble in this country and a lot of local representatives might say, on foot of representations, that we need to do something about parking charges, rates and rents, not because they are acting in the interest of a specific business but because they are looking for solutions for what is a macro-economic problem. However, they might be spurred on to do that because of particular representations by local small business. There is a great deal of difference between that and a multinational corporation sidling up to a Minister and saying, "Put this into legislation for us" or sidling up to an MP or a TD, as they are here, and saying, "Vote for this particular piece of legislation". What would Mr. Bertók have to say about those difficulties and could he comment on the way different countries have taken contrasting approaches to getting that balance right?