John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I wish to comment on the Government amendment to this worthwhile Private Members' motion. I am very disappointed; I will not put a tooth in it. We commend ourselves, we endorse ourselves, we strongly support ourselves and we look forward to ourselves. It is an insult to the work done on this commendable Bill by the Independent Senators. I hope that we will not see the likes of this lazy Government response to the motion come before us again. I put my case this morning to the relevant Minister and I am happy to say as much publicly now. I discussed the matter with the Minister and I recognise the proposals he is bringing forward, which are very much to be welcomed and are rather sophisticated.

There are several issues I wish to discuss in general. Most Senators in the House today have identified what we could term the "red in tooth and claw" lobbyists, perhaps from the drinks industry, the banks and the tobacco industry. They are easily identifiable. On the other side of the dichotomy are voluntary services and the voluntary sector, which are also easily identifiable by their actions and objectives. However, as we move towards the middle we come across a blurring of the lines between what is and what is not legitimate lobbying. For example, we take the view that anyone with a blatant and open commercial interest in promoting his or her product is considered a lobbyist. There is no question about that. However, what about the voluntary sector? Sometimes, as part of its fundraising activities, a voluntary organisation may be involved with the commercial sector. The objective of the organisation may not be primarily to raise money although the money being raised is to fund the activities of the organisation. Are such people lobbyists? Are they the type of people we wish to regulate? We probably should regulate these people in some way but not in the same manner as we should regulate the more professional lobbyists.

Often, it is not easy to identify when one is being lobbied. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence relating to sales representatives from medical companies visiting doctors or physicians in surgeries, clinics or hospitals. There may be anecdotal evidence to suggest that the prescribing practice following the visits is somewhat different to the prescribing practice before the visits. Naturally, the evidence remains anecdotal and that is half of the problem. Since it is anecdotal we cannot prove it, and because we cannot prove it we cannot act on it. Instead, we must simply rely on the goodwill and integrity of the physicians, which is not a problem in the vast majority of cases. The anecdotal evidence and the lack of empirical evidence is certainly an impediment to identifying lobbyists.

For years people laughed when mention was made of the Galway tent. People always looked at each other with a wry smile on their faces. Often we wonder about the incentive of most of the developers who were entertained and wined and dined and had to pay substantial fees to visit the famous tent at Ballybrit. I wonder whether some of the things we know now, but which seemed obscure at time, would have happened if developers did not have such ready access to power.

Sometimes lobbying is as much about the omission as the act. As a councillor on Cork County Council I recall when guidelines were introduced relating to burying pipes coming into houses under the ground. It was recommended in the relevant Department guidelines that these pipes should be buried to a depth of 600 mm or approximately 2 ft. When we examined the older guidelines we noticed they stated that the pipes should be buried more than 1 m deep. One may think that it is all rather obscure and that it makes no difference but it made a considerable difference, because if a contractor is digging more than 1 m deep it must shutter the sides of the trench and that adds considerable costs to the job. This obscure omission or change came about. We do not know why it came about but the result was that thousands of people throughout the country found themselves without water two years ago when half the country was frozen. If the pipes had been buried more than 2 feet deep, no one would have had frozen pipes.

I produced a policy for Cork County Council on taking into consideration the previous planning history of a developer before it would get planning permission for its next development. My view was that if a developer left a shoddy estate behind, it should not get planning permission for the next job. I believed it was common sense. The county manager told me that such a law already existed and that there was no problem with it. However, there was a problem with it because the onus of proof was changed and it was not for the developer to prove that it finished the estate.

The law was changed to put the burden of proof to a High Court standard for the local authority to prove that the developer had not finished the estate. What local authority will do that? These are the little omissions that we regard as obscure, of which most of the population, including me, take little heed of until we are affected by them.

It is a very complex area. While we welcome the Senator's proposal, unfortunately with the whip system as it is, if there is a vote I would not be able to support it despite my very fine words here. However, the Senator understands the nature of the whip system.