Kenny challenges value of €2,000 put on ministerial gifts

THE PROPOSED €2,000 value put on ministerial gifts which have to be declared to the Standards in Public Office Commission was challenged by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny.

He said the figure had been increased from €650.

"How can a balance be struck between €650 and €2,000? How was the amount of €2,000 decided? I do not know what kind of gift would be given to a Minister or Minister of State for opening something."

Taoiseach Brian Cowensaid the purpose of the Ethics in Public Office (Amendment) Bill 2007 was to require office-holders and Oireachtas members not to accept gifts or loans worth in aggregate more than €2,000 in a calendar year from a friend for personal reasons without obtaining the commission's opinion that acceptance would not be likely to materially influence the recipient in the performance of his or her duties.

Mr Cowen said a balance had to be struck. "On the one hand, the figure needs to be small enough to be meaningful as an ethics requirement and, on the other, it needs to be large enough so that office-holders and Oireachtas members do not need to spend time counting every ordinary gift from friends.

"It also needs to be large enough to avoid making the Standards in Public Office Commission deal with applications concerning gifts worth less than the set amount."

Mr Cowen said the threshold had not been increased since the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995, apart from a change to a convenient euro amount during the euro changeover in 2002.

"The threshold set in the Act was the first attempt to set thresholds in this area. It is by no means unreasonable for the first attempt to be revised 13 years later in light of experience, not to mention the need to counterbalance the effects of inflation eroding the true value of the original figure in the intervening years."

The world in which they lived was different from that of 1995, said Mr Cowen. While €2,000 was not an insignificant amount, it was the opinion that the Bill, when enacted this year or next year, would set the amount for the coming years.