THE IRISH Farmers’ Association (IFA) has dismissed proposals for the registration of lobbyists’ interests and believes the onus should be on public representatives to give an annual statement of who they meet.
The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has received submissions from some 50 organisations, political parties, politicians, companies and individuals on the issue and will publish them all on its website by tomorrow.
The submissions are part of a public consultation, and a first step to formulate a policy and legislation on the registration of lobbyists. A Bill is expected in the first three months of next year.
But the IFA has said it will “strongly resist any proposals to list all contacts between IFA officers and staff and public representatives/officials”.
In its submission to the department, the association said there had to be a “clear differentiation” in the requirements between “national representative organisations” acting in the interests of their members and “bodies/individuals carrying out lobbying for commercial gain”.
It said it had a membership of more than 87,000 farmers and in excess of 3,700 officers and executive staff. A requirement to list all its contacts “would be totally impractical, highly wasteful of resources and prohibitively costly, especially for a voluntary organisation such as the IFA”.
The association believes that a scheme should be operated similar to the registration of donations, whereby public representatives are required to list the donation and donor rather than those giving the money.
A spokeswoman for the department said, however, the proposed register was not intended to impede meetings but “to bring transparency. And that really is the guiding principle”.
The spokeswoman said that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, countries such as Canada and a number of states in the US had a lobbyist register which allowed citizens to get a sense of what sort of contact was made and the context of that contact.
Details of submissions will be available on per.gov.ie/regulation
