Lobbyists who break the rules could face imprisonment

Lobbyists who fail to register or who don’t submit returns of activities will be subject to enforcement measures including fines and possible imprisonment from January next year.

The Head of the Lobbying Register Sherry Perreault today disclosed that the investigative and enforcement provisions of the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 will be commenced from January.

In a briefing Ms Perreault said that new sanctions would apply to those engaged in lobbying activities who failed to register, or failed to submit quarterly returns of activities, by the next deadline of January 21st.

She said an automatic fixed penalty notice of €200 would apply for minor breaches such as late filing of returns. Investigations may be carried out for more serious breaches of the Act including the conducting of lobbying activities when not registered. The sanctions for these breaches included financial penalties, reputations damage and, for very serious cases, imprisonment.

Most bodies or individuals who engage in lobbying are required to register as lobbyists under the Act, and are also required to submit returns of all lobbying activities each quarter. Even when there has been no lobbying activity in the previous quarter the person or body is required to submit a ‘Nil’ return.

At a media briefing on Monday, Ms Perreault said that the response rate has been encouraging, with over 1,500 registrants and 7,500 returns during 2015 and 2016.

Asked about the volume of fixed penalty notices, or more severe penalties, she envisaged, Ms Perreault said that it was “unknown”. She said she was confident she had sufficient staff to cover the additional enforcement duties.

She said that some who had registered had not realised that they were required to file returns every quarter but that her office had followed up with these bodies.

She said there was broad sectoral representation on the register and while she expected the number to rise a little, that rise would be finite.

One of the new powers in the legislation is a new restriction on former ministers, minister of state, special advisers and senior public servants.

If they leave the public sector, there is a one year cooling-off period where they are not allowed to engage in lobbying activities, unless they apply for some or all of the conditions to be waived.

There was one application for a waiver during 2016. While Ms Perreault said she was not in a position to divulge the identity of the individual, the former special adviser to Richard Bruton, Ciarán Conlon, disclosed that he was the person. He is now a director of a communications company in Dublin.

Ms Perreault said there was a variance on the quality of information that has been supplied between bodies.

“Some do a very good job with the returns. There are others who have not fully understood in terms of the level of detail that is required

“We are following up with those people.”

She said there was a lot of detail about the information required for a return on the website, as well as an instructional video, she said there was still some work to do in that area.

She pointed out that those who submitted inaccurate, or out-of-date, information would be required to resubmit their returns.

If they failed to do so, they would be deemed not to have made a return and subject to sanction.