Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

During pre-legislative scrutiny, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, engaged with many of us on this and most of us probably had conversations with its representatives directly. I fully support the spirit and intention of Deputy O'Callaghan's amendment. We need to make sure that however this is resolved, it does not create opportunities for other interests to influence our electoral processes or referendums outside the election period. One of my fears, even with the wording the ICCL originally proposed, was that it did not guard sufficiently against that. That is the challenge now. It always gets my back up a little when the threat of unintended consequences is used as a reason for inaction. This is an issue that has to be resolved but it has to be resolved in a way that does not create other problems. For example, one could imagine a situation, as happens in other jurisdictions, where all the conditions of this amendment were adequately adhered to but money from economic or political interests, which many of us would strongly oppose, could still be used to finance campaigning activity outside an election period. That would not necessarily fall foul of any of the conditions in the amendment even though it would impact on the outcome of elections, referendums or even just the legislative process. Finding that balance is quite tricky. I support Deputy O'Callaghan on this issue. We would like the Minister of State to come back to the committee because there is a desire on our side of the House to find a way to resolve this matter that is fair and equitable, and to tackle that imbalance that Deputy O'Callaghan rightly noted. If the Minister of State was minded to do that, we might be able to get cross-party agreement on the fix for this. I encourage that approach because I am not sure that what is on the table at the moment achieves that fix. However, we do not have the advantage of the skills and draftspeople the Department has. If the Minister of State were to come back to us at some near stage, we might be able to progress it effectively.