Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will not detain the Minister of State or the House for too long. I appreciate that it is late on a Thursday evening.

I thank the Minister of State for his remarks. Dare I say it, but I think he understands, appreciates and supports the overarching principles that have informed the development of the Bill. I wish to thank Deputies Mairéad Farrell and Ó Murchú, who spoke broadly in favour of the approach that the Bill seeks to take. I recognise the work that Deputy Farrell has done in the context of her own Bill, which was brought to Second Stage last November.

There is a general consensus around what needs to be done; the question is when it ought to be done. In my view, it ought to be done now. We do not know the minute or the hour when we might experience another case whereby, as I described in my earlier remarks, a Minister or a senior public official leaves office on a Friday and takes up another gig the following Monday that is directly related to the previous role that he or she enjoyed. I am not, for one minute, claiming that any individual who may take up such an opportunity does so for any other reasons than having an interest in the new role that he or she has been offered and to make a reasonable living for himself or herself. That is absolutely fair enough.

However, the perception is everything. The intersection between business, politics and public life more generally in this country has to be better managed. Lobbying has to occur through a pane of glass. The lobbying register itself has been an enormously important innovation in Irish public life. The Minister of State is right to assert that it is working very well. It attracts broad support. The website is navigable, clear, transparent and easy to use. Indeed, occasionally I look up the register to see who is lobbying who and for what purpose. That is most important. It is precisely what my party and Deputy Howlin, in his former role, sought to achieve back in the early 2010s when we developed the legislation.

The Minister of State referenced the fact that very few applications were made to SIPO for consent or an exemption under the terms of the Act. There are a number of different ways to interpret the information that the Minister of State has provided to the House. My view is that given that very few section 22 applications were made by those who were leaving particular roles and moving into new ones, that makes the case for this legislation. It will not always be the case that SIPO will decide to reach back to investigate an issue that may make it uneasy or may have caused some disquiet. SIPO can look at it on the merits of the case itself. As legislators, we need to provide SIPO with the opportunity to do that. It is an opportunity that it does not have currently and one which needs to be presented to it, because we all know that transparency in public life is key to public trust in democracy. We know that if there is not public trust in democracy, it affects social cohesion, trust in our institutions and our polity more broadly, and can lead to the rise of extreme politics and the collapse of society as we know it. That is no exaggeration. We know the impact that mistrust of democracy can have. In many ways, perception is everything.

The idea that one can leave a job on Friday and move into another one on Monday with absolute impunity, when those two particular roles might have been connected, does not sit well with the public or anybody who values democracy or this institution.

We need to be careful in how we proceed and proportionate in how we respond. I absolutely understand why Deputy Howlin, when he was framing the initial legislation, did not provide for a mechanism like this at that point in time. This was a radical departure in Irish politics and law. It was important that we had an opportunity to assess how the legislation actually operated in practice. Now after six years in operation, we can look at it in the round and identify how it ought to be improved.

This is not direct attack on or criticism of colleagues in Sinn Féin. The one-year cooling off period gets it about right. I know because I was involved tangentially in discussions about what this legislation might look like. I know that the Attorney General's office would have had serious concerns about introducing anything longer than a one-year cooling off period because the right of somebody to work and to provide for themselves is important.

When the recommendations are made, when the Cabinet discusses them and the memo is brought by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, is it the Government's intention, given that there have been several initiatives across the House in this area, to share those recommendations with those interested in this space? That would be an important step forward.

I would like to see this legislation enacted sooner rather than later because we do not know the minute or the hour when the kind of case which arose last September will arise again. Our focus needs to be on instilling, ensuring and guaranteeing trust in our democracy at all times. That is why the legislation needs to be enacted as soon as possible. That is why I, unfortunately, oppose the idea that we need to wait for another few months to allow the Government to develop its own legislation. That said, I hope the draft legislation brought to this House by the Minister of State will include many of the propositions contained in my Bill, as well as those in the Bill from Deputies Farrell and Doherty.

I thank the Minister of State for his interest in this area. I look forward to working with him over the next few months in an effort to get this right.

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