The 2020 Programme for Government contained a commitment to “reform and consolidate the Ethics in Public Office legislation.” This in turn gave rise to a review of the statutory ethical framework that began in January of 2021; which was subsequently completed in December 2022 and published in report form in February of 2023.
This was not just supposed to be some virtuous exercise in tinkering around the edges. Lord no.
It was meant to address what Michael McGrath in his prior incarnation as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform described as “one of the last pieces of unfinished business arising from the controversies and critical examination of our standards in public life that arose in a number of occasions over the last twenty years.”
He was referring specifically to outstanding recommendations of the Moriarty and Mahon tribunals, which at that point in time in 2021 were already ten years on the shelf gathering lavishly vouched dust.
The review also took account of the ‘Hamilton Report’ recommendations on preventing economic crime and corruption; the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) recommendations on reform of Ireland’s statutory framework for ethics; and the Standards in Public Office Commission’s experience of administering the current framework.
To date however there has been no sight of even a draft of the new legislation that would give effect to the recommendations outlined in the review report.
The fact that they appear to have been put on the legislative long finger could easily create the impression that the report ultimately made some minor thematic recommendations. It did not.
It called for an entirely new framework o legislative ethics underpinned by a set of overarching integrity principles that would include specific statutory prohibitions, including on the use of insider information.
It also recommended strengthening disclosures requirements to improve transparency and examining whether the regime should encompass more office holders and strengthening the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO. It recommended an updating of post term employment restrictions for elected officials/public servants with respect to lobbying.
Despite the obvious gravity of these issues, we are unlikely to see any major legislative changes in the immediate future.
This was confirmed by current Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Jack Chambers last week, when he stated that while the current Programme for Government commits to “update the Ethics in Public Office legislation,” people should also be in no doubt that this is “a very complex area which requires careful consideration. Challenging operational and policy considerations arise that I want to explore fully and get right,” he said.
Fair enough you might say, and there is in fact little doubt that the Minister is correct when he says that to make real and meaningful change to the current regime, the changes must be “coherent from a policy perspective and user-friendly from an operational perspective.”
But really, we are now five years on from the initial commitment to reform this critical area of legislation and we are two years on SIPO’s 2023 warning that some directorships and positions of employment across the public service continue to remain outside the scope of the ethics acts because regulations have not been updated since 2018.
Indeed, SIPO specifically warned at that time that at least 42 public bodies remain outside the remit of existing ethics legislation. That situation persists to this day.
But, and this is rather bizarre, when it raised this with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan, Delivery and Reform, it was told that the department was “not able to draft amended regulations.”
By some kind of political hocus pocus that regulatory hurdle now seems to have been overcome, as Minister Chambers also stated last week that his officials are currently preparing draft regulations to address this very specific area of SIPO’s concern and that he intends to have them enacted by the end of this year. We will wait and see what happens there.
At the overarching legislative level however, as distinct from the making of regulations, there does come a point when the argument about complexity starts to ring suspiciously like the sound that a can makes when it is being endlessly kicked down the road.
We have the reports. We know what needs to change. We have known for years. What we do not have is clear sight of when the state is going to get its act together on ethics legislation that is in dire need of reform.
Government ministers can bang on all they like about the unacceptability of corruption, conflicts of interest, lack of accountability and abuse of power. But when they do so in the context of a sloth-like approach to setting out clear rules to combat all the above then they will have to forgive us if we start to see them as nothing more than the exhibitors of what John Drennan once called that “grizzling cloud of cantankerous moral seriousness not seen in Leinster House since the great age of Fergus Finlay.”