The lobbying of a minister, a stagnant Seanad and the politics of self-survival

Naughten broke the rules but won’t pay a price

SURVIVAL is the name of the game when it comes to Irish politicians. It has been yet another weird and wonderful week in our politics. First we have the story of a minister discussing a matter of public policy with a lobbyist in a purely personal capacity, notwithstanding that his department has statutory responsibility in the area.

Then we have the never-ending saga of Seanad reform and the announcement that we will have a 26-member Oireachtas committee to review the Manning report of 2015, which was charged with coming up with ways of reforming the Seanad and the manner in which it carries out its business.

Your columnist has some skin in the game when it comes to both stories. For over a decade I have been writing and commenting about the regulation of lobbying across the world and even wrote a book about it with some colleagues back in 2010.

I also acted as a pro bono adviser to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform when it was considering what should be included in the then government’s 2015 Regulation of Lobbying Act.

In 2013, I was involved with the Democracy Matters group, which campaigned successfully to save the Seanad. I have long been of the view that having senates is inherently a good idea and I continue to believe that a reformed Seanad can be a useful body in making Irish politics and Irish democracy better for citizens.

And that’s what politics should be about. Alas the evidence on show this week suggests that Irish politics continues to work in odd, self-serving ways where survival remains the primal instinct for politicians.

LET’S take the strange case of the minister and the lobbyist. The Regulation of Lobbying Act was introduced in September 2015. The purpose of the Act is to provide for a web-based Register of Lobbying to make information available to the public on the identity of those communicating with designated public officials on specific policy, legislative matters or prospective decisions. In essence its aim is to inform the public about who is lobbying whom about what.

The legislation covers practically the full spectrum of the lobbying industry. It has clear definitions of what lobbying involves and of which policymakers and what policy issues are involved. The act also makes clear what information lobbyists must disclose. Lobbying includes telephone calls as well as face-to-face meetings.

The lobbying register clearly provides citizens with vital information on the lobbying process and is an important arm of the State’s promotion of open and transparent policy-making.

The great beauty of the register is that it is easily searchable and Eoghan Ó Neachtain, the lobbyist involved in this week’s controversy, has registered 10 acts of lobbying including two meetings with the Minister for Communications and Energy Denis Naughten.

The phone call between the two men in November 2016 is not registered, perhaps because the lobbyist, Ó Neachtain, viewed it as a simple relaying of factual information which is not regarded by the Act as lobbying.

This is where things get complicated. While technically Ó Neachtain did relay information to Minister Naughten, that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission cleared the proposed merger between INM and Celtic Media, he also seems to have elicited what Minister Naughten was going to do, which was basically to refer INM’s proposed bid for Celtic Media to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

It is difficult to see this as anything other than lobbying. Across the globe, gaining information which might be of any use whatsoever from a politician or a public official is defined as lobbying.

If Ó Neachtain’s purpose was to find out what Minister Naughten’s view was, then that was lobbying and it should have been registered.

As Minister Naughten has said, he expressed ‘a purely personal view’, that the likely course of action would be a referral to the BAI. Well, if Ó Neachtain did not know that before the phone call but knew it after the phone call and passed it on to people who it affected, well that was lobbying.

Ó Neachtain, as he has stated, was hired by INM to find out the minister’s reaction to the decision of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, and to see if he intended to refer the deal to the BAI. After the phone call he had that information. That was lobbying.

We now know that Nigel Heneghan, the head of the company, which Ó Neachtain was working for, Heneghan PR, emailed this information to Leslie Buckley, then chairman of INM, telling him it was highly confidential. And that message was quickly forwarded on to Denis O’Brien, the largest single shareholder in INM.

That information came about as a result of lobbying and the public should have known such a call was made.

AMONTH later, Minister Naughten refused to tell the Dáil what his plans were in relation to the takeover. So it seems that Denis Naughten, the private citizen, was happy to tell a lobbyist what he was inclined to do but Denis Naughten, the Minister for Communications and Energy, was not prepared to tell to the Dáil.

This really is an extraordinary state of affairs. It is blindingly obvious that ministers should not be giving private views to lobbyists about any issues for which they have statutory responsibility. It is extraordinary that they would not give this information to the Dáil.

There has also been a lot of baloney this week about how politicians have to answer phones and how the electoral system forces them to. No they don’t and no it doesn’t. Denis Naughten knew that Eoghan Ó Neachtain was a lobbyist when the phone call began. It’s a bit late now to be expressing sincere regret for taking part in the conversation. What should have happened was Naughten should have either refused to take the call or, once he knew what it was about, shut the conversation down.

There will be no repercussions for Naughten, though, because nobody wants an election. Nobody wants a head that the Taoiseach doesn’t want to give and that the minister doesn’t want to offer up.

Accountability is lost in the fog of self-survival.

That self-survival instinct is on full display when it comes to Seanad reform. Four-and-a-half years after the referendum to abolish it was lost, and a full three years after the Manning committee issued its report, the Cabinet has decided to appoint an unprecedented committee of 26 Oireachtas members to examine its possible implementation. If ever a committee was designed to fail, it’s this one.

Given the adversarial and divisive nature of politics, it is impossible to see any strong and conclusive decisions coming out of this committee.

The idea of the Manning committee was to devise a route for a reformed Seanad to play a role in politics after the referendum. And its proposals did just that. They were, however, perhaps just a touch too radical for our elected politicians.

The then-government could simply have accepted the Manning recommendations and reformed the Seanad three years ago. It required no constitutional change to do so.

Instead, we have had apathy and delay and are now lumbered with the ludicrous situation of a committee of insiders examining an expert report a full three years later.

No more than Denis Naughten’s apology, it is the politics of self-survival and insults the citizens of this State.