Professor Gary Murphy:

I thank the Vice Chairman and his colleagues for their kind invitation to appear before the committee. I will not read my statement, which I forwarded to the committee earlier in the week. I would make one or two fundamental points. As far back as 2006, I was commissioned along with one of my colleagues, Dr. Raj Chari, to investigate the possibility of the Irish State putting in place regulations on lobbying, which over a decade later led to the Regulation of Lobbying Act under the last of the Fine Gael-Labour Governments. The implementation of that Act was seismic with respect to what it was trying to do, which was to make sure the architecture around probity in public life was strengthened. If we take that alongside the Ombudsman legislation and the Freedom of Information Act, the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015, which covers pretty much the whole spectrum, it was a signal step forward for the Irish State, as I said in my statement.

It was worth mentioning that because we have had two general elections since that Act was implemented. Many of the members of this committee of this committee would have changed since 2015. We in the Irish State find ourselves part of a much wider arsenal of democracies, which have lobbying regulations. When I started out it was only the United States, Canada, the European Parliament and Germany, which had regulations, some of which were basically not worth the paper they were written on. The 2015 Act made a substantial difference to public life in Ireland, but it is not perfect. The regulator will speak later about difficulties she has had. I am of the view, as I said in my statement, that the 2020 supplemental Act, should be enacted in its entirety. I do not see any plausible reason for the State to resist the recommendations put forward by Deputy Pearse Doherty and Mairéad Farrell. More openness, accountability and transparency are better. As I said in my statement, the Irish State for too long operated covertly and in secrecy. It did not need to tell its citizens what it was doing in their names. I do not have to go through the examples and I deliberately did not do that in my statement. We know of public policy decisions taken in private which have spectacularly backfired on this State. I wrote a phrase the regulator uses on her website, namely, lobbying is about the public knowing "who is lobbying whom about what". That goes to the heart of it. This new Bill is important in that it strengthens the legislation with its additions in terms of that principle.

Regarding the cooling-off period which is a fundamental part of the Bill, I heard Deputy Doherty when he first mooted the idea of this new Bill speaking of extending that period from one year to two years. It was supposed to be two years in the Regulation of Lobbying Bill, but when the Bill became an Act, that period was reduced to one year. Internationally, two years is the minimum.

I have written two books about the regulation of lobbying and I have spent too long thinking about it and all the evidence points to a two-year minimum because of the revolving door. The regulator herself made this point in her last report and we saw it with a former Minister of State seeking legal advice before going to the regulator over a year ago. He then took up a position where he would have been a lobbyist for that group. That is just too short of a cooling-off period. The idea of a cooling-off period from the Oireachtas is that we do not have the perception that insiders are trading on access and in that context I am in favour of all the regulations.

There has been a lot of discussion about section 22 and it beggared belief when I read it the first time. Failure to comply with the section which dealt with the issue was not considered to be a relevant contravention of the Act. That was odd and I could not understand why the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform resisted that in the first place. I would strongly encourage that to happen. Regulators need teeth and Bills and Acts need teeth. There need to be sanctions for not obeying the law and in that context I am strongly in favour of all the proposals put forward in the Act. I am happy to answer any questions later.