Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The new draft national risk assessment highlights a decline of people's trust in institutions as a risk facing the State. I would make the case that cronyism, corruption and a complete lack of transparency have meant that more and more people are disgusted by the politicians and the institutions in this State. I ask the Taoiseach to comment in that respect on the recent actions of his Minister of State, Deputy Troy. We know, thanks to an article by Mr. Aaron Rogan in the Business Post, that Deputy Troy, in his position as a Minister of State in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, recently met big tech companies to discuss Ireland's national position on upcoming European legislation, namely, the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act.

He met them only after the companies were assured there would be no detailed minutes taken of what was being discussed. They wrote expressing concern as to the freedom of information dimension, assuming a note of the meeting would be kept that would be subject to freedom of information but that the note would not be overly detailed, and they were assured that only a high-level and anonymised overview note of the event would be drafted for records purposes and the meeting would be subject to the so-called Chatham rule. The details of who attended the meeting are not provided and there are no detailed minutes of what was discussed. Is this not very poor behaviour - an attempt to evade the lobbying rules and to have back-room, closed-door discussions with corporate lobbyists? Should the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, explain who attended the meeting and what was said?

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