Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The intention of the Bill is that lobbying activity be regulated through registration and reporting requirements, the responsibility for which lies on the lobbyist. That is the architecture of the Bill. If I am a lobbyist and I am going to lobby somebody then I must register. This amendment reverses that, which means that if it happens abroad, responsibility falls on the lobbied.

I have said, all the time, that we need to be practical about this matter. It would mean that every time I went to Brussels or elsewhere on Government business, if anybody wanted to come up to me for a chat, I would have to ask them whether they were registered under the Irish legislation on lobbying and whether they fell within its parameters, and I would have to take their details before I talked to them to make sure they were registered. That would be so impractical in view of the normal activity of European Council, where the people who attend meet officials and so on. It would fall to every Member of this House to do so as well. It would not only apply to those attending an informal meeting of the European Council or anything else; if Members or officials were abroad on holiday and somebody talked to them or engaged them in conversation, they would have to have that type of discussion. I do not think that can realistically be done. I do not see how designated public officials could meet those requirements. One would trap people who inadvertently said "I talked to Senator Norris about that matter when I was abroad." A person who did not remember an informal conversation with someone at some gathering or other would find him- or herself on the wrong side of the law. The Bill is simple and transparent, and I do not want it to set traps for people in regard to this matter. I just think it is not practical to achieve what Senator Byrne has set out in his amendment.

The Bill does not stand alone. It complements other transparency arrangements that are already in place to ensure that accountability is achieved - the freedom of information legislation, the open Government partnership initiative, the ethics and standards in public office legislation. All of these exist to address any improper activities that might go on without imposing impractical or unworkable requirements on people.

While I fully appreciate what is intended by the Bill, I do not think we should transform what is an eminently workable, practical piece of legislation into something that is not workable and might in fact bring the legislation into disrepute.