Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I agree with my colleague, Senator McDowell, on the issue of the GRECO report. Without going back over the issue in great detail, as somebody who has taken a good deal of care in drafting 20 amendments on Committee Stage, it is frustrating to have had to do so without sight of the report, quite apart from the fact that we do not know whether the Government is taking into account the criticisms purportedly expressed by GRECO in crafting its own amendments. Being unable to see it has certainly hampered us in being able to table amendments of the sort we might have wished to. It is frustrating to know that the report is there but that we are apparently not allowed to see it. We do not even know if Government has seen it and taken it into consideration in its own amendments. Perhaps the Minister will respond on that particular issue since it will be central to the debate and will be an issue that will arise again and again as we go through the Bill. I am disappointed that the Minister is not prepared to accept my amendment. We were seeking to be constructive and to offer greater clarity on the definitions in section 2.We are suggesting a more precise definition should be offered of the term used already in section 2, namely, a person employed in the service of the State. That is the definition offered by the Government for law officer, meaning a person employed in the service of the State where condition for the employment of the person was that he or she was a practising barrister or solicitor. We are proposing to qualify what a person employed in the service of the State should be, that is a member of the Garda Síochána, Defence Forces or a civil servant of the Government or of the State.

Senator McDowell and others have spoken about the oddities and anomalies in the definition provisions as currently drafted. I agree they are full of anomalies and we have not yet got to the internal contradictions with the numbers in section 10. One issue which arises in the definition section is the issue that the definition of "lay person" is further qualified in section 2(2) by a qualification period of 15 years. As my colleague, Senator Humphreys pointed out, that is extremely long and a much longer clause than we would normally see in any employment contract such as a non-competition clause.