TDs, SENATORS and public servants should be obliged to disclose their liabilities and debts as well as their assets in line with officials in the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), the Standards in Public Office Commission has said.
Under current ethics legislation, TDs, Senators and public servants are required to declare their assets and earnings.
The commission also criticises the piecemeal approach to introducing protection for whistleblowers and warns it does not “go far enough in addressing the culture whereby whistleblowing is seen in some quarters as an unacceptable activity”.
In its 2009 annual report, the standards body, an independent body charged with oversight of ethics and electoral legislation, also notes that €13.6 million was paid to political parties out of exchequer funds last year.
It repeats its call for increased transparency in political party funding to strengthen public trust in parties and minimise corruption risks. It says there is “no requirement under the electoral Acts for political parties to keep proper books and accounts, to specify all donations received in these accounts or to make the accounts public”.
The report states that “it is not currently possible to know the annual income of political parties nor to have a full picture of how elections are funded”.
Chairman of the commission Mr Justice Matthew P Smith in his foreword to the report says reform of political party funding, whistleblower protection and the powers of the commission “must be tackled in order to ensure integrity in our public services”.
The annual report points out that any member of staff at the National Treasury Management Agency assigned to Nama is legally obliged to provide a statement of interests, assets and liabilities.
Such disclosure is “entirely appropriate”, it said.
“It is clear that similar considerations apply to other public officials dealing with financial institutions.
“It is of the view that all public officials should be required to make similar disclosures under the Ethics Acts.”
The annual report also says the OECD recommends that “current liabilities, loans, mortgages, etc other than minor debts be disclosed”.
The commission calls for ethics legislation to be amended to include liabilities above a certain threshold.
The chairman notes that “while the rest of the world appeared to believe that Ireland had improved its standing on an index measuring perception of corruption”, citizens’ trust in the State’s institutions “seems to have taken a battering in the past couple of years with examples of governance failures in both our public and private sectors”. The commission calls for “a mandatory legal requirement to maintain proper books of account” and to make them public.
Labour Party justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte welcomed the commission’s call for comprehensive whistleblower protection laws to be introduced as a matter of urgency.
But Mr Rabbitte, who this year reintroduced whistleblower legislation he first published in 1999, said “11 years later, this Government is still resolutely opposed to the measure”.
Labour in government would bring in such legislation “as an immediate priority” after the next election, Mr Rabbitte said.
The members of the commission are chairman Mr Justice Smith; Comptroller Auditor General John Buckley; Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly; clerk of the Dáil Kieran Coughlan; clerk of the Seanad Deirdre Lane and former minister and TD Michael Smith.
The commission cost €855,000 to run last year, €178,000 less than in 2008 when its operating cost was €1,033,000.
The report is available at www.sipo.gov.ie
