Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mairéad Farrell, my colleague in Galway West, and Deputy Pearse Doherty for bringing this legislation before the Dáil. I will certainly be supporting it.

I want to refer to the second statutory review of the Regulation of Lobbying Act. The Minister's predecessor said we did not need to do anything, and that was in January of this year. If the current Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, is to bring in another approach, I welcome that, but it is November and it was only in January last that it was said there was no need to change the legislation.

That is particularly worrying because the then Minister in January talked about bringing transparency, and he stated "that transparency of interest representation is key to allowing citizens to track the activities and potential influence of those who lobby". Later in the document, he said there was no need for any changes and stated "the amendment of any legislation should only be considered where a compelling business case for change is clear and unequivocal". I presume the current Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, does not agree with that. It was only in January of this year that the Department and the then Minister said they did not need change and that the few changes that are required could be done on an administrative basis. That was a blatant denial of what SIPO said in its second report and its first report.

I appreciate the Minister's bona fides on this matter.

In his contribution he moved on a little from the position in September where he was simply reviewing section 22. He is now reviewing more of that, which is welcome, but that has been brought about by the Sinn Féin Bill before the House. That is very upsetting when the Minister talks about learning and doing things differently. We set up SIPO, which I would not describe as ultra-radical. Would the Minister? It is moderate, reasonable and rational and it produced a detailed report containing 22 recommendations. It set out where the legislation was inadequate and asked for changes to that. It said that it had already pointed that out in its first report and that it was pointing it out again, and so the Department, with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, ignores it all. It took a Sinn Féin motion tonight to bring forward some of the recommendations. I thank that party's Members for using their Private Members' time for that.

It has to be asked why we have to rely on an Opposition party, with the fewer resources available to us, to bring a Bill like this before the House when SIPO has clearly pointed out the absolute necessity for the Bill and the different recommendations, some of which were extremely basic, to allow it the right of investigation in respect of non-compliance with the code of conduct, to lay a code of conduct before the Dáil, to publish some reports and the details of some reports in the interest of fairness and in the interest of people who have been cited in the media of contravening the code when they have not? SIPO has pointed out clearly the downside of not publishing things. One would think that if a proactive Department and a proactive Minister were serious, they would deal with that.

When we look at what is being asked in the different recommendations, as I said, they are extremely basic. In a 2019 submission SIPO stated:

Earlier this year the Commission became aware of a possible breach of section 22 of the Act. Following correspondence with the person and the employer concerned the Commission was satisfied that section 22 of the Act had been contravened. The commission had no authority to investigate ... this breach of the Act. The above breach brings into sharp focus the lack of power to enforce the Act's post-employment provisions, or to impose sanctions for persons who fail to comply with these provisions.

That is directly in regard to the revolving door and so on. We have a review that says we did not need any changes whatsoever. My time is up but there are many issues here. At this point all I can say is that if the Minister is going to do things differently he should remove the nine months. I always think of nine months as a pregnancy. We do not need another nine months to review this. We need the Minister to read the two reports from SIPO and the practical recommendations it made and to act on them.

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