Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her positive remarks about the background motivation to the amendment.

A number of things occur to me. Senator Boylan referred to the Irish Academy of Engineering and she thinks it is pro-fossil fuel. I have a slightly different view. I think it sometimes tries to persuade people to be realistic, that we could have a crisis on our hands if we do not have some reserve of fossil fuel to keep us going. I take the academy as saying that. If, however, the Irish Academy of Engineering were being funded by, for instance, a multinational oil exploration company or something of that kind to a significant degree, which I do not believe is the case, it would be useful if that were publicly known. Likewise, sometimes on social issues, to go back to the example I chose of TENI, it is fairly tough in the language it uses and accuses people of being transphobes and the like. If this is Exchequer-funded language being used in a political context, somebody who listens to RTÉ is entitled to know that the representative of that body is in fact lobbying the Government or the Oireachtas to change something using public funds and that it is not simply an NGO which is wholly independent of the State.

I agree with the Minister of State that perhaps it is a wider issue. It seems to me that, since all the tribunals, there has been a very significant restriction on funding of political parties. There is transparency, and the amount of money that can be given to them by any individual is strictly limited, but that does not seem to apply to do-gooder NGOs, whether the State is providing the funding or some American political right-wing or left-wing fund or some left-wing international organisation is. That transparency does not exist. It is all very well for a politician from a party to go on the radio and be confronted with the views of an apparently apolitical NGO of some kind which is active in the debate, but it affects the status of a lobbying activity if the body is in fact dependent on the State to renew the grant next year. There is a different relationship to the Government if a Department of State is lobbied by a body that depends on a Minister's goodwill to keep it in existence financially. I just think we lack transparency completely on that front, and that is what this amendment is all about.

I will press the amendment, but not to a full vote.