Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

No. 15 in the Government legislative programme, the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, is expected to be published before the beginning of next session. Its purpose is described as establishing an officials compliance committee regarding the OECD Convention on Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. The difficulty is that the Government's White Paper on aid commits to ratification of the UN convention against all corruption. Is it the Government's intention, as declared in the White Paper on aid, to ratify the UN convention, or is the proposed legislation a substitute?

There are at least 20 international instruments that Ireland signed at the United Nations awaiting ratification.

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is the lead Department in respect of most of these instruments. By way of being positive, is it the Tánaiste's intention to create the capacity within Departments to draft legislation rather than having it done by the Attorney General's office? In light of the recent paucity of legislation, is the Government considering farming out the drafting of Bills in order that we might have a realistic legislative programme for forthcoming sessions?

We have been down this road with previous administrations and the same old reply, namely, that additional resources have been made available to the Office of the Attorney General, is always given. There is no point in avoiding the central point that a problem exists in the context of the drafting of legislation and this is apparent in each Department and in the Government's legislative programme.

If, for example, the Government intends to abandon the ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption in the same way it abandoned the ratification of the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants and Members of their Families——

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