Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Shortall's amendment proposes to introduce an additional new review to evaluate the impact of administrative sanctions and the commission's capacity to impose this regime three years after the system is operable. The Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 already provides for a regular and comprehensive review regime. I do not consider that an additional review system is required.

Section 2 currently obliges the Minister to conduct a review of the operation of the legislation every three years and make a report of the findings of each review along with the conclusions drawn from same to the Houses of the Oireachtas. There have been three reviews of the 2015 Act since it was enacted.

Section 2 of this Bill amends section 2 of the Act to allow for the period between these statutory reviews of the Act to be extended from three to five years. Following my Department's recent in-depth review of the 2015 Act, I have decided that the review period should optimally be five years for the following reasons. The legislative provision must supplement other provisions for scrutinising the impact of legislation. The amending legislation, like all legislation, will be subject to post-legislative scrutiny one year after enactment. The experience of the statutory reviews of the 2015 Act has been that conducting a review every three years does not allow enough time to see the impact of changes to the legislation and the Standards in Public Office Commission has stated that it would not object to an increase in the intervals at which such reviews take place, provided that such intervals remain reasonable. Furthermore, my officials keep in close contact with SIPO on the operation of the legislation in addition to the formal statutory review process. There would be nothing to prevent my Department conducting a review within an earlier timeframe if the situation warranted. I do not therefore propose to accept the amendment.

I would also make the point that in my experience of running two Departments, and two and a half years in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, reviews take a lot of time and a lot of resources. We have had major reviews on the Ethics in Public Office Act and on freedom of information legislation and a review of the lobbying Act itself. They can take anywhere between one and two years to do a comprehensive review. One ends up using a huge amount of departmental resources doing rolling reviews of different pieces of legislation and I just do not think that it is the best use of resources. One can have a debate about how frequent one thinks is the appropriate timeframe for a review but that is my view based on my experience of running Departments.

I want to touch on another point Deputy Shortall made on why we have chosen civil and administrative sanctions ahead of criminal sanctions.

Based on the Department's analysis, the legal advice received and the consideration of good practice internationally, the policy recommendation that I accepted, a policy recommendation from the Department, was that criminal sanctions represented a disproportionate policy response. In line with the advice of the Office of the Attorney General, administrative and civil sanctions were explored and developed. The civil and administrative sanctions regime is considered to be an effective and proportionate policy response to what appears to be a relatively low risk of breaching the post-term employment restrictions set out in section 22, notwithstanding that where breaches occur, however infrequent, they can have a disproportionate impact on undermining public trust. I acknowledge that. Furthermore, these sanctions will be in the public domain when applied as they will be confirmed by the Circuit Court. The sanctions are not small. They include a penalty of €25,000 and not being permitted to engage in lobbying for up to two years. More important is the reputational impact on anyone found to be in breach of the section and the subject of an administrative sanction. It will have an impact on an individual's employability, adding further weight to the section. I assure the House that there is ongoing engagement between officials in the Department and SIPO in the operation of the administrative sanctions regime. SIPO will draw up the relevant procedures and, under the legislation, it is required to publish them. Work is well under way to ensure that once this Bill is enacted, it can be put into effect.

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