Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Senators for their contributions. I will not be able to cover everything in the few minutes I have remaining but my officials and I have made notes and we will reflect on all the points made. I appreciate the welcome for the Bill across all benches. The principles enshrined in this Bill are supported across the House. Many Members of this House indicated that this was anchored in a suite of measures, none of which will compete but many of which interact. I am under no illusion that one can legislate for goodness. One just puts up watch dogs as best one can but cultural change is much more profound and that is a job of work we must undertake so that we change the way of doing things. That will not be achieved by legislation alone. However, we need a legislative framework where we can signal to people what we regard as proper and outlaw as far as we can what we regard as improper and ensure we have mechanisms for discerning which is which.

Senator Byrne welcomed the Bill for which I thank him. He thought the Bill was watered down from the initial concept that was published. When I started off on the journey relating to all the individual pieces of legislation, I thought the FOI and whistleblowers legislation were going to be fairly daunting jobs that would be complicated to craft. This legislation was the most difficult in terms of getting the shape of it right. I repeat that what we are essentially doing is putting some sort of shape on a very legitimate activity, which is lobbying. Lobbying is the right of every citizen. Everyone has the right to have their views heard but it needs to be done in a way that is transparent. In order to get that right, we had very exhaustive consultation that I have listed and discussions on how other places go about it. There are not too many exemplars to which you could point and say that this is the model we could look to. After the enactment of this Bill, I dare say we will be among the ones that other people will be looking to follow.

Senator Byrne said that we have reduced the cooling-off period from two years to one and have changed its character. This is a balancing act in many ways because people have constitutional rights to work and if a person spends some time in the public service or a State agency, the notion that they would be barred from work for two years means that there is no way the State would escape without having to pay compensation for the period. So the State will basically pay somebody two years wages if it does that. I was not terribly keen on or minded to do that. In essence, what I wanted to do was stop people walking out of a job where they regulated an area and on the next day, go work for the people who were regulated. This is wrong. I will bite my lip and not give instances of this in the past. I am suggesting that we leave it to the registrar which is the Standards in Public Office Commission to make that determination on a case-by-case basis. The commission can say a person can or cannot do that or decide that this sort of work is acceptable while another sort is not acceptable. I think this is reasonable and is the right balance but we can debate it again.

In respect of the grades that are to be covered, Senator Byrne said he believes principal officers should be captured by this legislation from the beginning. That is a very fair point. Categories of people are laid out such as Deputies, Senators, Members of the European Parliament, Secretaries General and Assistant Secretaries and analogous grades in the public service are going to be brought in immediately. There will be others in what Senator Barrett inelegantly called quangos - non-governmental organisations - who should be involved in this. I have made provision for that and intend those grades to be involved, a point touched upon by other Senators. Over time, they will grow and it will be a matter for the input of this House as to who should be properly involved. I imagine that principal officers will be captured by this within the first 12 months. There might be lower grades who have influence and more senior grades that we were going to capture automatically who might have very little influence on policy formulation. This is something we need to give some thought to and we will debate that.

A number of Senators spoke about lobbying and the sale of State assets. I was very clear from the beginning regarding the sale of State assets that were within my remit, for example, the National Lottery licence or Bord Gáis Éireann. I established a code of conduct, published it on the websites of the NTMA and my Department and excluded myself and anyone advising me from any contact with anyone who had an interest in buying anything.

I designated the group that could be contacted, who were designated officials, and put their names in the code of conduct. There was therefore one portal - one access point - for anyone who wished to discuss it or find out about it. I never entertained anyone on it. Nor did I allow any other Minister to be involved in it. This is the way these things should have been handled and will be handled in the future.

Senator Byrne also spoke about foreign registration. This was a matter we debated in the other House. This legislation has to be practical. The basic structure provides that if a person is going to lobby and he or she falls within the category listed as a lobbyist, he or she must register, but the person lobbied is not required to register. I disagree with Senator Sheahan on the notion that if someone approaches another, at a funeral for instance, he or she will have to say, "Excuse me, before I talk to you, are you registered?" Life cannot function like that. If someone puts his or her arm around another in the pub, this person will not have to say, "I cannot talk to you because you are not registered; show me your permit to talk to me". None of us would survive very long in politics if we operated like this. The onus is on the person doing the lobbying. The legal obligation falls on them to register.