Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I think it is $25 in the Maryland Assembly. It is either $25 or $50 for the US House of Representatives. For example, when one of the people we met was prevailed upon by a supporter to be his guest at a major sporting occasion — the supporter was a successful businessman who had an expensive box in the stadium — the member of the House of Representatives ended up paying out $1,000 that he had to pay back for accepting the hospitality. It was so much in excess that the only solution was to do that.

I thought what we had learnt and, incidentally, what the Standards in Public Offices Commission reported during the week was that people are learning how to be clever. I am not imputing to anybody in this room any false standards. I am simply saying that some of us, perhaps, tolerate things because they have always been there and we need to stand back from them. I do not believe it is correct that I can accept gifts up to €1,999 from a person or a number of persons on an annual basis and not have to declare them. I should be prohibited from that. That is the price one pays. That level of generosity handed out on a regular basis by a number of people outside politics is not the way to persuade the public that we are above suspicion.

I am not disputing for a second that those who want to be crooked will be crooked no matter what we do. That is not the issue. The issue is the statement we make of what we believe to be right behaviour. I should say, before I bring the considerable wrath of the Tánaiste down on my head, that I am not claiming some kind of moral superiority. I claim that I live by standards that I think most ordinary people do. I think most ordinary people will believe that saying it is fine for a member of the Oireachtas to accept gifts of that magnitude regularly for personal use and without anybody knowing about it is wrong. That is not the way to persuade people we are what we claim to be, which is above suspicion. That is really the problem. What we would tolerate in other people, what would be acceptable in ordinary life is not acceptable for us.

As a result of what has happened, and the greater proportion was from and within one political party, we are left in a position where we have to earn back trust, and we have singularly failed to do so. Putting in place legislation such as this, as Senator Dardis has correctly said, will not make the crooks honest but it will probably turn the honest into the appearance of crooks in the eyes of the public because that scale of generosity is unimaginable to most people.

Most people cannot imagine getting a gift of €2,000. We are setting it as the standard below which there is no disclosure. That is wrong and I profoundly disagree. Those figures should have gone in the opposite direction, although I appreciate the argument is about inflation. Those figures should go in the opposite direction if we are to be seen to be serious about what most of us are trying to be serious about.