Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In respect of the Minister's final point, although the Minister is correct in saying that it deals with staff, I stated that my intention is that this only deals with members of the agency and the committees. One can be on the investment committee but not a member of the agency. It is about capturing those individuals and not the ordinary member of staff, although one could have a debate on why the member of staff would not be included. In this debate, I am talking about the agency. There is no appropriate mechanism in terms of recording conflicts of interest. Let us take an example. This is where past practice should teach us a lesson.

We know the issues that arose in the glass bottle site in respect of accusations of conflict of interests. We know about the interaction of Anglo Irish Bank and board directors that sat on both boards. What we should have in terms of transparency to ensure that those issues are captured in real time and not four or five years later is that there is a register. This legislation does not even allow for it to be contained within its annual report or some register "that Mr. X had a declared interest in an investment and therefore absented himself from the proceedings on the issue, or Ms Y had a declared interest." There is no register whatsoever being maintained. It is noted in the minutes of the meeting and the minutes will not be publicised. There is no transparency in relation to conflict of interests with board members and the desire of the public to be aware of those issues.

Even when members contravene this legislation, which means they have not declared a conflict of interest, and means they were participants in the decision process that they had a conflict, the legislation does allow for them to be removed but allows also for them to remain in the position. I think that is appallingly weak. This area needs to be revisited.

I am suggesting, but it needs finessing, that there should be a declared register of interests of agency staff, just as each member of the Oireachtas has to have a declared register of interests or at least the agency should maintain a registerer where people have identified themselves to be conflicted. It is not proposed to hold a register, one would have to go through ever single minute of the agency and every single sub-committee for years on end to find out how many agency members over a period of ten years have acknowledged they were conflicted. This makes for very bad corporate governance and also very poor accountability in my view.