Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry I was not present to hear the initial contribution but I was attending another meeting. I presume the legislation in the US in respect of whistleblowers would penalise vexatious or malicious endeavours, just as it does here. If not, it would be a recipe for bounty hunting. The advice to look to international best practice is very good and we should follow it. In many instances, whistleblowers turned to Members of the Oireachtas because they felt there was nowhere else to go because the culture within which they operated and worked was hostile to the idea of anybody coming forward to say anything that jarred with the status quo.

I want to sound out witnesses on a couple of interrelated issues with which the proposed legislation purports to deal. What about conflicts of interest? When people think about ethics legislation, public officials and politicians, at the forefront of their minds are brown envelopes, kickbacks and crude, nudge-nudge, wink-wink transactions for favours. As a result of the fact that we do not live in Australia or the United States of America but in Ireland, a very small landmass with a small population, we face other ethical issues which are more important for us and more difficult to pin down and legislate around. The issue of connectedness is important and one could not throw a stone from here to the wall without finding someone who is related to or went to school with someone else. That is even more acute in specific, sectoral circles of business, the law and the professions.

It is important that we get the legislation on insider information right because the great dilemma for the general public - and, therefore, for the system - is that there is a sense that there are insiders and outsiders. There are people in the know who move in the same circles, rub shoulders with each other and are connected with each other and there is a feeling that the corruptness of the system is almost casual. It is not necessarily dramatic, taking place in smoke-filled rooms or at meetings in quiet dark corners. Rather, it is almost a function of our being a small society. How do the witnesses think the current draft legislation addresses this and seeks to tackle such issues?

Where is the line drawn between a declaration of interests and an individual's privacy? The current draft envisages the ability of the House to suspend an elected Member for a period of 12 months for a breach of the legislation.

Will the witnesses address that question in terms of the fact that people are elected by popular vote to become Members of the Oireachtas? They have a mandate. Issues such as privacy and the democratic mandate are obvious tensions in the legislative framework.