Seanad debates

Tuesday, 3 July 2007

Ethics In Public Office (Amendment) Bill 2007: Second Stage

 

6:00 pm

Michael Finucane (Fine Gael)

This Bill is just not good enough. The Ethics in Public Office (Amendment) Bill 2007 does not achieve all that it could and does not go far enough in making elected officials accountable for gifts and benefits they receive.

The Bill does two main things. It increases the threshold for gifts to Ministers and creates a new system for moneys given to Deputies and Senators by friends. Under the Bill, a Minister will be able to keep gifts given to him or her in an official capacity as long as they are worth less than €2,000. This figure is more than twice what it should be if adjusted for inflation, €997.80, and that means that Ministers get more into their pockets from property that would otherwise belong to the State.

The Bill creates a new system whereby a Deputy or Senator would have to seek the approval of the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, before accepting a gift of €2,000 or more. If SIPO feels that the gift would not compromise the Member of the Oireachtas, he or she may accept and keep it. Otherwise it cannot be accepted. This begs the question why such a high threshold was chosen by former Deputy Michael McDowell and the Government. The sum of €2,000 is very significant and it seems that the Bill de facto legalises gifts of up to €2,000 to politicians without any scrutiny.

My party campaigned in the previous general election on a manifesto that included a commitment to introduce a new code of conduct for elected Members and officials to deal with complaints. This would be administered by the Standards in Public Office Commission which would have the powers to suspend or fine or both if, after due process, elected Members or officials were found to have acted unethically. It is a great shame that the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party decided to prop up Fianna Fáil and hold back real ethical reform. It is difficult to take seriously any ethics legislation coming from the present Administration. The reason we have this type of politics goes back to the attitude the Taoiseach has taken. He refuses to set standards, either for himself or his Ministers, and that is a core issue. Politics must command respect because it sets standards for those who assume high office.

Fine Gael does not pretend to believe standards of personal propriety have not been damaged by this Taoiseach. We abhor the notion that it should be acceptable that a Minister for Finance would allow a "dig out" to be organised on his behalf when speaking in his capacity as a sovereign minister of a government. That is wrong.

Much media focus in recent times has concentrated on Deputy Flynn. We are talking about legislation imposing a cap of €2,000, yet Independent Deputies are claiming the deals they made were secret and involved millions of taxpayers' money. In the interests of openness and transparency, whatever deals were done with those Independent Deputies should be made public by the Government. I disagree with what Deputy Flynn said recently to the effect that in her case, it only mattered to the people of Mayo what deal was done. That is not right or proper in politics.

Much of the media reporting has focused on RTE's action in recent times. Despite what the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, said on "Questions and Answers", as regards the intervention of the Taoiseach, I believe a nod and a wink in the right direction was good enough for RTE in making a decision. All the nods and winks were given by the Taoiseach in his intervention. What he did on radio at the time was deliberate and calculating as regards Deputy Flynn and was not prompted, as such, by the interviewer.

RTE's vision, mission and values document states clearly that it will deliver a value for money service and be honest and transparent in all of its activities. To meet these commitments, the station must now spell out the nature of this settlement and the reasons behind it. It must also spell out exactly how it will ensure that the costs it has incurred as a result of the settlement, and the wider import of the decision, will not negatively affect investigative journalism in the future.

There is precious little in this Bill concerning the need for root and branch reform of the ethical framework governing local government activities. These debates occur against the backdrop of a decade of revelations relating to the planning system and the perception, perhaps based on fact, of a major systems error in local government.

It is the view of my party that at the commencement of a meeting or if an interest becomes apparent during the course of a meeting to discuss planning permission, councillors should be required to declare whether they have personal or prejudicial interests. That is one area I would like the new Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, to examine. Councillors who are auctioneers should not be involved in a decision-making capacity in the framing or reframing of draft development plans for local communities. Like it or not, they have a vested interest in submissions and their success, from which they may benefit. I have said at local level that councillors, regardless of their party affiliation, should not be involved in the drafting of draft development plans for local communities. The sooner there is movement in this direction, the better. We also favour the establishment of an independent local government standards board with dual responsibility for issuing guidance on the code of conduct for local government members and investigating allegations of breaches of the code.

No doubt the three Government parties and the Independents that have decided to run alongside them feel somewhat smug today. They are passing a weak Bill, perhaps in the belief that the electorate does not care about ethics or clean Government. In the future many people will become conscious of the defects in the ethics legislation, and in this regard the Bill is a missed opportunity. It was framed on foot of developments involving the Taoiseach and the former Tánaiste, Michael McDowell, and introduced as a fig leaf by the latter to cover up certain deficiencies that existed and to placate certain members of his electorate.

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