Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Gould, Mythen and Ó Murchú.

I commend my colleagues, Teachtaí Mairéad Farrell and Doherty, on bringing forward this very important legislation. My party was forced to propose these amendments to the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 following recent behaviour by Fine Gael politicians, in particular, which has brought to the fore the flaws in the current system. We have witnessed the former Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Brian Hayes, walk out the door of that Department and in the door of a banking lobby group. We then saw another former Minister of State at the same Department, Michael D'Arcy, resign from the Seanad to take up a job with the Irish Association of Investment Managers. There are other examples.

This cosy club of politicians and lobbyists is something with which most people are, rightly, uncomfortable. It is a revolving door that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have sought to keep open over the years. The golfgate event during the summer highlighted the problem once again. Ireland is a small place. Here was a former Minister of State, now a banking lobbyist, mingling with Ministers, Senators, a Commissioner and a Supreme Court judge at a private knees-up. It stank of the rotten politics of the past and reminded people of the problems that still exist and which must be challenged and changed. There is a clear need for a defined separation mechanism to ensure that former Ministers cannot trade on their previous insider knowledge to their own benefit or that of a lobbying organisation and at a cost to the public.

This Bill will implement 13 recommendations made by the Standards in Public Office Commission to the Government in 2019. It will increase the cooling-off period for which Ministers, Ministers of State, special advisers and high-ranking civil servants must wait before moving from office to the lobbying sector. It will allow SIPO to investigate and sanction breaches of that requirement. It will also give SIPO the power to investigate and sanction persons or bodies that avoid their obligations under the Act, such as by destroying records, emails or text messages. One must question why anyone would object to these provisions. SIPO has called for legislative changes since 2016 to increase its investigative and sanctioning powers, broaden the scope of the Act and tighten up certain definitions. We need immediate action to close the revolving door between politics and vested interests. The politics of the golden circle, the politics of the nod and the wink and the politics of who one knows rather than what one knows must end now. This Bill will go some way towards achieving that.

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