Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the legislation, which is a step forward in the fight against corruption and the protection of whistleblowers. I also welcome the commitment by the Minister to consolidate the corruption legislation in the future, although I am not sure whether the Minister will have time to see that through.

This legislation is, by and large, a result of serious criticism by the OECD of the manner in which the UN Convention against Corruption was being implemented in this country. It conducted a number of evaluations and found that some of the provisions of the legislation were inadequate. It was also critical of general awareness of the legislation and called for the introduction of provisions on whistleblowers.

The Minister stated:

I acknowledge the considerable input from the OECD into the development of this legislation through its review of our laws and systems. Dialogue with the OECD and with our partners in the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption, GRECO, has helped in no small way to refine and sharpen our response to corruption through the development of this Bill.

I suspect this was tongue-in-cheek. The fact is this is being done to fulfil our international obligations. We are adopting this legislation to prevent further embarrassment to the State due to our being out of line in the implementation of the relevant convention.

The Minister also said that corruption could not be tackled through legislation and policing alone, and that is true. We acknowledge that the political culture of corruption became established under Fianna Fáil taoisigh from the time of Charles Haughey to the present day, which meant that corruption at all levels was not taken seriously or tackled. It permeated general society, and this has contributed to many of the problems we have at present, whether in our banking or financial sector or areas of the public sector. It is the political culture which sets the scene for maintaining standards in the various institutions and generally in society. The present and previous Fianna Fáil-led Governments have much to answer for in that regard.