DELAYS IN implementing anti-corruption reforms promised in the programme for government are potentially costing the economy billions of euro every year, an international watchdog body has claimed.
Transparency International Ireland yesterday published an update to its 2009 report examining the principal institutions responsible for enhancing integrity and tackling corruption.
These include the executive and legislature, political parties, the judiciary, the Ombudsman, the civil and public service, law enforcement agencies and the media.
The National Integrity Systems 2012 report is part of an EU-wide anti-corruption initiative supported by the European Commission’s home affairs directorate.
The report finds that measures aimed at preventing undue influence over public policy and stopping corruption in local government have yet to be implemented.
Some 39 recommendations were made in the 2009 report to address underlying governance issues, reform the political system and to strengthen legal and institutional safeguards against maladministration and corruption.
Transparency International said that “regrettably” none of these reforms had been implemented in full. Partial progress had been made in 20 areas.
Several key anti-bribery and white-collar crime laws had been passed since 2009, strengthening anti-corruption legislation. Ireland had also ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption – one of the key recommendations in the original study.
The organisation also welcomed recent measures aimed at increasing transparency in political party funding, which it said “should go some way to preventing corporate and individual donors from buying political influence”.
Chief executive John Devitt said the delays were potentially costing the Irish economy billions of euro every year.
“In 2009 we estimated that the Irish economy was losing around €3 billion annually from white-collar crime and corruption. However, too little has been done since then to detect and prevent a problem that has left the country bankrupt,” Mr Devitt said.
Mr Devitt said it was not only traditional forms of corruption such as bribery that cheated citizens. “Hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to make a living today, and that is in no small part down to the fact that strong measures to prevent corruption and white-collar crime were not in place during the boom years.”
CLEAN-UP CAMPAIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Stronger anti-corruption safeguards at local government level
New measures to encourage self-reporting of corruption- related offences
Comprehensive disclosure of interests by public officials
Public officials should be required to declare all personal and business-related assets and liabilities, and those of family members
More education on corruption