Politicans will face suspension without pay for breaches of a tougher ethics code, including failure to co-operate fully with tribunals of inquiry, which will come into force later today.
The final draft of the code of conduct for non-officeholding TDs was agreed on Tuesday night by the Dáil's Members' Interests Committee.
Meanwhile, the Members' Interests Committee will tonight decide on the fate of the former Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Ned O'Keeffe, Fianna Fáil TD for Cork East. Mr O'Keeffe resigned last year after it emerged that he had not declared during a Dáil debate that his farm outside Mitchelstown possessed a legally-held licence to feed meat/bone meal to pigs. He is expected to be suspended for a number of days under existing conduct rules.
The new code of conduct cannot be applied retrospectively and therefore cannot be used against Mr Liam Lawlor, the Dublin West TD, unless he refuses to comply with a fresh order from the Flood tribunal.
Some members of the committee are expected to tell a special Dáil debate today that powers laid down under the Standards in Public Office Act could make enforcement of the new rules difficult. Under the code, non-officeholders recognise their duty "to foster and sustain public confidence and trust in their integrity as individuals and in Dáil Eireann as an institution".
TDs will accept an obligation to ensure that their conduct does not bring the integrity of their office, or the Dáil, into disrepute, except where "there is a legitimate and sustainable conscientious objection". They will have to arrange their private financial affairs in such a way that these do not create conflicts of interest.
However, the Members' Interests Committee went even further than the Standards in Public Office Commission had recommended in a section dealing with the use of State resources. The SPOC had, it is understood, recommended to the committee that politicians should not make "improper use" of any payments or allowances from the public purse. However, the committee adopted a much broader formula, which reads: "In performing their official duties, members must apply public res-ources prudently and only for the purposes for which they are intended."
Under last year's Standards in Public Office Act, politicians can be suspended for up to a month without pay if their actions are found to be inconsistent with the performance expected of them.
