Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is probably worth going back to first principles on the lobbying Act because there are quite a number of different issues there. The purpose of the lobbying register is to enhance transparency in the activities of entities under the Act with Government. The purpose of it is to provide people of this State with clear information about who is engaging with Government, when, and on what basis. It is not an effort to curtail freedom of expression of any individual or any corporate body. While I am a full supporter of a decarbonisation agenda and how Ireland gets to that, particularly in my constituency, where I would worry about using the lobbying Act to single out an individual entity or body is that it risks being a curtailment on that freedom of expression more broadly with potential read-across which would be concerning.

We have discussed the questions of financing earlier. The code referenced by the Senator in relation to the World Health Organization is a very important one but it is important to say it does not eliminate contact with Government; it prescribes it. It says in the context of public health policy, interactions with the tobacco industry should be limited, and where interactions take place, they should be conducted with maximum transparency. It is left to the Department to work out how that is done. The Department of Health is responsible for the development and promotion of public health policies and it will prepare guidance for its officials on supporting the implementation of the WHO guidelines in respect of tobacco. That is how that is being managed but not specifically through the lobbying register which performs a different function. The approach is slightly different.

The purpose of the lobbying register is to enhance maximum transparency. Even in singling out a particular body or treating it differently, one may be creating incentives for it to start behaving differently outside of that. I would simply say that the lobbying register provides the best possible transparency in terms of interactions and that we should want to know as much about that as possible. I honestly think that is a better approach.

There was something else I wanted to say but it has gone out of my mind.