Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Government approval for the drafting of the Bill to reform the existing freedom of information legislation and extend freedom of information provisions to all public bodies was secured at the end of July when I brought my proposals to the Government. The general scheme has been published on my Department's website and submitted to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel for legal drafting. Following publication of the final report of the Mahon tribunal, I decided to examine how the existing legislative framework for ethics could be reformed to develop a single comprehensive legislative framework grounded on clear and comprehensive principles. Rather than try to amend what is in place, I propose a more ambitious task of recasting the ethics legislation having regard to the work of all the tribunals and all that we have learned to make it a model of best practice. This work is ongoing in the political and governmental reform unit in my Department. This will involve, among other things, consolidation of existing legislation and amalgamation of other relevant legislation into a single framework, while examining the position in other jurisdiction to establish best practice. I have no wish to reinvent the wheel.

Last week I announced Government approval for the priority drafting of a Bill to provide a comprehensive statutory framework for Oireachtas inquiries on matters of significant public importance. For example, the Bill will enable the holding of inquiries into the banking crisis. I have written to the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Finance and Public Expenditure and we have submitted the heads of the Bill to the committee. It is and will continue to be my practice to submit the heads of a Bill to the relevant Oireachtas committee to get its observations before I move to drafting. I have asked the committee to provide observations and understand it will try to work to an agenda that will enable me to have the Bill drafted before year end. I realise this is ambitious, but that is what I wish to do.

A general scheme of the Bill on lobbying is being prepared by my Department and it is intended to bring the scheme to the Government as soon as possible. The issue of lobbying is extraordinarily complicated because lobbying is a genuine activity and every citizen is entitled to lobby. The trick is to create a legal framework such that lobbying will be done in a transparent, overt way, not in the Galway tent or analogous bodies.