Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Every single parliament is going to be reflecting different issues. Here, agriculture could be a big thing, workers' standards, all sorts of things. The more information is got out there now as opposed to it all coming in a big bang, the better.

Regarding lobbying in the US and EU, I took part in a joint committee hearing about lobbying at the European Parliament last week. There was a presentation given by a Trinity College Dublin professor who has done a lot of empirical research on lobbying. He graded the EU countries and institutions on lobbying and we fell in the middle grade. This would be before the transparency register was set up. Depending on what happens with that, we could move into a higher register. As Deputy Byrne said, different countries have different cultures and views of these things. In some countries they are known as the anti-corruption register while other countries do not have them at all. We do have them and this Commission has taken a much harder line on people even voluntarily signing up for it. It is made much easier if people do so.

There is a further incentive in that Commissioners and their cabinetsonly meet with people who are on the transparency register. The issue, again, is how these matters are enforced and whether the information available is accurate. The United States is very evolved in terms of its lobbying and is at a very high level in this regard. However, there is also the other issue in that country of political funding and all of that, which drives a lot of the political play there.

In regard to how one obtains the documents, it would probably be done online. It might be worth making contact with the US Embassy here to see what access can be given within this State to US documents.

On the transposition of EU law, that is probably more an issue for the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions, which deals with what is happening in member states. My remit relates to the EU institutions and the European Court of Justice.