Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The bodies are covered by the freedom of information provisions. I thank the Deputies opposite for their contributions and amendments. This is an important range of amendments, on which we had a very useful discussion on Committee Stage. I have been reflecting very carefully on all that was said in order to deal with this as fairly as I can. It will be difficult to please all of the Opposition Members, since not all the views on the other side of the House are in sync. However, I wish to make one general point first.

Deputy Paul Murphy was not involved in the Committee Stage debate. That is not by way of criticism. We had a very good debate at the time. I do not regard lobbying as a bad thing. Lobbying is an essential part of a functioning democracy. Every citizen is entitled to lobby me, Deputy Paul Murphy and every other Member. Every local community organisation is entitled to lobby, as are bodies such as the IFA, IBEC or the trade union movement, to put their point of view to us. What we are doing in this particular piece of legislation is not based on the perspective that lobbying is intrinsically bad and needs to be controlled. Lobbying is the lifeblood of our democratic system, but for too long people have peddled influence, whether it was in the Galway tent or other places, with those in power in a less-than-transparent way. While in opposition I produced legislation on the registration of lobbyists and, latterly, I have done so in government. It is part of a suite of measures which often overlap and interlink.

With regard to the points Deputy Paul Murphy made about people looking for contracts with Irish Water, the company is subject to FOI provisions. All documentation and any communication in that regard is subject to FOI. That is the reason this suite of transparency measures are interlocked. The Registration of Lobbying Bill is not a sui generis piece of work; it is linked into and intermeshed with other pieces of ethics legislation and freedom of information legislation that this House has enacted in recent times.

I wish to try to do justice to the quite different points that have been made in the amendments tabled by the Deputies opposite. If I may, I wish to treat them individually and sequentially. I will deal first with amendment No. 2, in the name of Deputy Sean Fleming. It is different from the rest of the amendments. I feel very strongly about it because - perhaps I have not explained it well enough - my intentions on the matter are fundamentally misunderstood by the Deputy. The changed environment that I propose, which has been accepted in terms of the model of appointments to State boards, is designed to be as open as possible.

In my judgment, with all due respect, I think Deputy Fleming's amendment misses the point. He says that nobody should lobby for a place on a State board; I want everybody to lobby to go on a State board, or to be free to lobby to go on a State board. For instance, a local community organisation might decide that Deputy Mary Lou McDonald would be a great person to be on a State board, and its members could decide to write to the Public Appointments Service or to the Minister to ask for her to be considered. Organisations promoting women or people with disabilities, which might decide there are not sufficient numbers of women or disabled people or people from ethnic minorities on State boards, should be entitled to ask that they be considered - to put the case that they are a suite of people with unique qualifications and should be considered for appointments to State boards. My view on appointments to State boards is that people should be encouraged to lobby, in that sense - to promote themselves, to advance themselves. Once they submit their applications to the PAS, there will be a transparent selection system and the list of candidates will be put to the Minister or to the decision makers at the time, be that the Government or whoever. This is important, in my view, particularly in a generic way, if it means the inclusion of more women or more rural people or urban people, depending on the issue. People should not be debarred from doing so, and I hope that point is understood by Deputy Fleming. I do not think he is opposed to that, because I think he is referring to the old-fashioned notion of people making a phone call and asking to be put on a board. That should not be allowed, but the new transparent system does not allow for that in any event.

The scope of amendments Nos. 3 and 5 to 15 is very wide, seeking to bring all communication within these bodies within the scope of what constitutes lobbying activities in the definition. This is a much broader approach that applies to other public service bodies within the scope of the Bill. I understand the Deputy's concern that the framework of the Bill should be as comprehensive and as robust as possible. This is a view I share. I wish to reassure Deputy Fleming that it will be possible, as I indicated subsequent to our discussions on Committee Stage, under section 6(1)(f) and (g), to prescribe that public servants, or other office-holders or persons, be designated as public officials under the Bill.

It is just a matter of approach. Neither of us believes that from the beginning we will capture everybody who will ultimately be subject to this legislation. Whether the list is broadened from the beginning and we decide to start with this list, or we decide that the Minister will have the capacity to add categories to the list with a formal review as the Bill progresses, is just a matter of difference of approach. I think my approach is more open and more inclusive and will allow for more discernment, because there might be categories of people who might be lower down in the totem pole of public administration but actually have more relevance to the Bill when we see how it works in practice. I hope that is understood.

The North-South implementation bodies established under the British-Irish Agreement Act 1999 carry out their functions on an all-island basis and are responsible - as I have said many times with regard to other pieces of legislation - to Ministers in both jurisdictions. Further consultation will be required in relation to these bodies. I do not think they should be excluded, but how they are included is a matter for discussion on a North-South basis.

As I mentioned previously, it is my intention to extend the scope of this legislation on a phased basis. It will be difficult to get this embedded. At the outset, when I looked at the suite of legislation I was trying to drive through on the reform side, such as freedom of information, registration of lobbyists and all the other bits we have dealt with, I thought this would be simpler than it has proven to be. With regard to the concerns of organisations and people, we have had more interaction than most with bodies and heard the concerns expressed about how this piece of legislation will work. At the outset we had a very open forum at Farmleigh - which Deputies opposite may have attended - during which we had a very good debate.

Section 6(3) requires the Minister to have regard to any recommendations that may be made in a review of the legislation. On foot of suggestions from the Deputies opposite, this is set out in section 2: there is a compulsory mandatory review and the Minister must have regard to the outcomes of that review in deciding whether to designate persons, as well as having regard to the public interest. In the event that the designation of certain persons within the bodies listed in Deputy Fleming's amendments is in the public interest, it then will be possible for the Minister to use the existing powers once this Bill is enacted to extend the cover and capture those. I hope Deputy Fleming will accept that this is a reasonable way to proceed.

On amendment No. 4, categories of person other than public servants can of course be designated as the lobbied under section 6(1)(g). As I outlined, it is my intention to extend the scope of this legislation on a phased basis, beginning with senior civil servants and senior-level staff in local authorities. We both agreed it will be a shock to some of them to know that they will be involved in this legislation and they may need some training when it comes to that. This matter will be monitored in the first 12 months of the operation of the legislation, in the context of the required review. Section 6(3) specifically requires the Minister to have regard to any recommendations made in such a review in deciding whether to designate persons under section 6(1)(g), as well as always having regard to the greater public interest. I refer to the point strongly argued by Deputy Fleming. In the event that the designation of certain consultancies is in the public interest, it will be possible to bring those under the scope of the Bill. However, given the real variety of consultancies in the public service - Deputy Fleming instanced one which would have a significant resonance with the public - many consultancies would be at a much lower level, and whether it would be appropriate to include a broad provision along the lines that Deputy Fleming suggested, which will capture them all, or to have a more focused amendment is something we can debate as this feeds out in practical use over the coming 12 months.

Turning to amendments Nos. 17 and 20, proposed by Deputies McDonald and Fleming, respectively, both deal with the same issue. One of the concerns expressed by Deputies on Second Stage and Committee Stage was that there should be clarity. Most Members who contributed on Second Stage reflected the number of messages they were receiving from the general public and from organisations, which was that there should be clarity around who is in and who is out when it comes to registration and the requirement to register under this legislation. This has been a recurring theme raised by all the stakeholders during the extensive consultation process we have undertaken over nearly two years. My primary focus, therefore, is to put in place a registration framework from the very beginning that will be easily understood and in which there will be clarity and simplicity around who is required to register. There should be no ambiguity about that.

Moveable factors such as annual turnover, whether the annual turnover should be changed because of a contract, whether a person is suddenly included or excluded, or whether a person should have been included previously are genuine concerns that have been expressed to us. I think we have settled on a point from the beginning that is a reasonable point of inclusion. I accept both Deputies' points that it is open to debate whether the cut-off point of ten full-time employees is the right pitch. I do not have a closed mind on this point.

Is eight any better than ten? The public interest objective of the Bill should be the prime aspect on which we focus. It may be that in time, when we have practical experience of the implementation of the Act, once it becomes an Act, we may move to a more sophisticated mechanism rather than a simple numbers mechanism, but I assure Deputies that this is what is required in the beginning for people to have confidence that we will do this in a way that works from the start. If we were to go down to one paid employee, we would be capturing the normal work of Deputies, for example, and making them lobbyists under the Bill. We should have regard to this.

I envisage revisiting this issue once the first review is finished after 12 months. I have no difficulty with this, and whether it is me or somebody else sitting in this seat, I do not suppose my successor would have any difficulty in giving a practical report on how it has worked after 12 months and stating whether a different definition would be more appropriate. I hope Deputies will accept my bona fides in this regard.

With regard to amendment No. 18, which I have tabled, it is my best effort to capture what I thought was the consensus view of the Opposition - although I hear it is less than a consensus view now - with regard to the treatment of volunteers. On Committee Stage, based on a coherent and logical argument made by Deputies opposite, I agreed to further consider an amendment tabled by Deputy Fleming on the exclusion of unpaid volunteers from the requirement to register under the Bill. It has always been my policy that unpaid volunteers would not be captured by the requirements of the Bill. This was signalled when I published the Bill and, if I am not mistaken, in my Second Stage speech. This is primarily to ensure the Bill is practically workable.

During the consultation process, stakeholders made it clear that very often they do not have information on what communications their volunteers are conducting, particularly in large and dispersed organisations such as the Irish Farmers' Association. Every farmer in the country is probably a member of some farming organisation. If such a farmer, who has no paid function but is a volunteer activist in the IFA, were to have words in the local shop with a local Deputy about an issue, the IFA's national headquarters would have to know and register the farmer as a lobbyist. That is one example of how it is not practical. It is a strong case made to me by such organisations with a very large cohort of volunteers. Although we might be purist in saying we need to get to the heart of this by ensuring every organisation and every volunteer is captured by it - I hear what Deputies Mary Lou McDonald and Paul Murphy stated in this regard - we cannot enact legislation that is brought into disrepute by the burden it places on organisations from the very start.

The concern of the organisation that spoke to us was centred on the administrative burden of capturing such information, and a genuine and honest concern that inadvertent non-compliance was likely given the dispersed nature of such organisations. From a policy point of view, I am happy that much of the communication made by local volunteers would not be of a sufficiently important volume or complexity to warrant registering, having regard to the public interest. An occurrence in which a local farmer talks to a Deputy or somebody in the local pub or mart is probably not of sufficient merit to require it to be registered and logged in the public interest.

I propose this amendment to clarify that a representative or advocacy body which exists primarily to take up particular issues will only be required to register a relevant communication where it is made by an employee of a body or by a remunerated officer whose function relates to the activities of the body as a whole. This is important with regard to the point made by Deputies McDonald and Murphy. The communication of a remunerated paid official will be captured, but where the communication is made by an employee of a body who is not a paid official it will not be.

Section 5 sets out the meaning of carrying out lobbying activities. It states that for the purposes of the Act a person carries on lobbying activities if the person makes, manages or directs the making of any relevant communication in any of the circumstances to which section 5(2) applies. Section 5(3) determines what is a relevant communication. It states that relevant communications "means communications (whether oral or written and however made), other than excepted communications, made personally (directly or indirectly) to a designated public official in relation to a relevant matter." This might address or allay the fears of Deputy McDonald.

We are dealing with a broad range of amendments, and I apologise for taking some time but I hope the House will bear with me. The second of these amendments that I have tabled is amendment No. 21. At present, this subsection exempts from registration requirements requests from a public service body for factual information to be submitted. It is not lobbying, as it is a request for data and factual information. It is proposed to include an amendment to ensure this exemption also covers requests for factual information directed to a public service body. For example, if a journalist acting on behalf of a newspaper, which is the employer, contacts a designated public official to seek factual information on public policy, this would not require registration, as the person is simply looking for details and facts which would be on the public record in any event.

I will briefly deal with amendment No. 58, tabled by Deputy Fleming, who wants to remove unpaid volunteers from the scope of the Bill. I hope amendment No. 18, about which I have spoken, addresses the concerns raised by Deputy Fleming about the exclusion of unpaid volunteers, and I hope he will not pursue the amendment.

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