Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 39:

In page 9, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following:“7. (1) Where a designated public official is lobbied outside of the State, (in a manner to which section 5 would apply had the lobbying activities occurred within the State) such public official shall be obliged to register the fact that he or she had been so lobbied and the public official shall provide the necessary information to the Standards in Public Office Commission for inclusion in the register.

(2) Provision for maintaining this category of information shall be kept in such form as the Commission consider appropriate.”.

We discussed this amendment on Committee Stage. My amendment No. 39 refers to a public official. We are now only talking about Ministers and Members of the Dáil, essentially - nobody beyond that. That is all that is covered in the legislation so far, notwithstanding that some others might be listed by the Minister by way of statutory instrument shortly.

Where these officials as designated in section 6 are lobbied outside the State, I want a mechanism to capture that under this legislation. Those people should register with Standards in Public Office Commission regarding any such lobbying, because the organisation outside the State might not be subject to legislation within the State. I gave the example of the then Minister for Finance, who was lobbied in Davos by some vulture funds about the selling off of NAMA loans that they wanted to buy in bigger chunks than the lots being offered. That will probably be remembered as one of the most serious incidents of lobbying of a Minister by a private sector company from outside the State, and that cannot be captured under this legislation.

Amendment No. 40 deals with a similar situation. Again, I am talking essentially about Ministers being lobbied by an organisation from outside the State. I again propose having a mechanism under the Standards in Public Office Commission, if it is not practical to do it under the lobbying register, to capture Ministers who are seriously lobbied by organisations from outside the State, because they can have such influence on major Government decisions.

I know the Minister wants the legislation to be workable; that is probably his catchphrase. The smaller and narrower it is made, the more workable it probably becomes, but then the less effective it is. I know there is a balance to be struck, and casting it too wide could create unintended consequences, but some of these are issues we have seen.

I will not labour the point about Goldman Sachs, which will be putting documentation together for the Minister that may constitute lobbying when it comes with its perspective. We need to remember that an organisation such as Goldman Sachs has other clients - financial institutions in America, Europe and Asia - who might have an interest in buying shares in AIB down the road. While it is working for the Minister for Finance, it will not do anything inimical to its clients who might be interested in buying shares. So it is not coming clean - it is not possible for it to do so. I am not saying anything is wrong, but it is probably impossible in the financial world in which we live for people to have the level of international experience to advise a Minister on a topic such as this without having some other interests or dealing with other organisations which could have a vested interest in such a report that they would give to the Minister, because if they did not have the interests with other people, they would not have the expertise and experience to do the job. There is an issue here and we need to see some of that captured in the legislation.

The essence of my two amendments is to broaden the legislation to include these two points.

See this speech in context