Ireland’s tough lobbying rules spark cries for similar laws elsewhere

Two years after Ireland introduced some of the strictest laws in the world on lobbying transparency, the reforms are being held up as the gold standard for policymakers looking to shine a light on the often murky world of influence peddling.

Calls for transparency are growing louder across Europe, especially in Germany, where a series of scandals have put a spotlight on the car industry’s close ties with senior politicians.

Ireland’s experience, say proponents of the law, has dispelled worries that tough lobbying rules would cripple the industry or limit the ability of politicians to do their job — as MEPs in Brussels resisting similar obligations have argued.

“Transparency is catching hold,” said Sherry Perreault, head of lobbying regulation at Ireland’s Standards in Public Office Commission, who’s traveled across Europe to showcase the Irish reforms. “To see this catching fire outside of Ireland is really terrific.”

The Irish reforms are simple. Any individual, company or NGO that seeks to directly or indirectly influence officials on a policy issue must list themselves on a public register and disclose any lobbying activity. The rules cover any meeting with high-level public officials, as well as letters, emails or tweets intended to influence policy.

Eight EU countries have mandatory registers for lobbyists — though none are as tight as Ireland’s.

For those in the business, the impact of the register and its requirements are primarily about the way the industry is perceived — and, broadly, they’re happy about it.

“I’ve not heard anybody suggest the Lobbying Act has impacted in any way the willingness or the ability to influence [policymakers],” said Conall McDevitt, CEO of Hume Brophy, one of Ireland’s largest lobbying firms. “It’s always better in our industry to have transparency, we’re all the stronger for it.”

Indeed, the push for more transparency is often advocated by lobbyists themselves, eager for legal clarity and happy to present themselves as fulfilling a vital role in modern democracies through the information they provide to policymakers.

“Lobbying has got a very bad name because of the actions of some individuals,” said Cian Connaughton, president of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland. “What the register has done is clarify to people what is happening, who is doing what.”

“It means people can’t say, ‘God knows what’s going on there,'” he added. “The fact that [the] new regime has hopefully increased people’s trust in the system, it’s a big plus.”

The tougher laws have their origins in the 2008 financial crisis that brought the Irish economy to its knees. The country’s travails are widely regarded as a consequence of the close relationships between politicians from the Fianna Fáil party, in power at the time of the crisis, and Ireland’s property developers.

“The fact that we had gone through this economic collapse [and that there was] a broadly held belief that influence had been peddled, there was such a ground swell of support for reform,” said Brendan Howlin, currently leader of the Labour Party and minister for public expenditure and reform between 2011 and 2016.

Popular revulsion at corruption had been building for decades. Several inquiries — including one into Ireland’s planning system that found widespread corruption had taken place in the 1980s and 1990s — had concluded that underhand payments had become endemic in the country.

To write what would become the 2015 Regulation of Lobbying Act, Howlin looked at existing rules across the world, including Canada’s, whose government first introduced transparency requirements in 1989 and subsequently strengthened them four times.

“There wasn’t much opposition to the concept,” Howlin said.

The law uses one of the broadest possible definitions of a lobbyist: anyone who employs more than 10 individuals, works for an advocacy body, is a professional paid by a client to communicate on someone else’s behalf or is communicating about land development is required to register themselves and the lobbying activities they carry out.

That means NGOs and other civil society organizations are just as much subject to the rules as groups representing multinationals or local industries.

Failure to register or filing incorrect information can result in a fine of up to €2,500 and a two-year prison sentence.

As of this week, 1,649 organizations were signed up to the register. Collectively, they had filed 14,551 reports on lobbying activities since the law came into force.

As corruption allegations continue to break across the EU, calls for similar action are becoming louder.

Eight EU countries have mandatory registers for lobbyists, according to Transparency International EU, an NGO that campaigns against corruption — though none is as tight as Ireland’s. Lobbying legislation is under discussion in Spain, Italy and Germany, where lawmakers from the Social Democratic Party have recently proposed the introduction of transparency rules for lobbyists.

In France, a far-reaching law known as the Sapin Law is being rolled out, and in Brussels, European institutions will shortly begin discussions to upgrade the existing voluntary register, which as of August had 11,366 organizations signed up.

“In all countries, associations are asking for regulation because it improves the way we work,” said María Rosa Rotondo, managing partner of the Madrid-based lobbying firm Political Intelligence and president of the Public Affairs Community of Europe, a European network of lobbyists.

“People should be able to know which special interests try to influence EU policy” — Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans

To many, it’s not the regulations but the lack of consistency across countries that’s the problem. “We need coherence, a balanced approach,” said Rotondo.

For example, Ireland’s rules, which regulate the interaction between lobbyists and anyone defined as a “designated public official” without regard to where that interaction takes place, have caused a headache for firms lobbying Irish MEPs.

Some registers, such as that currently in place for the European Parliament and European Commission, ask lobbyists to disclose how much money they’re spending, while others don’t. And in some countries, like the U.K., the definition of a lobbyist is so narrow that most individuals influencing public policy are not subject to transparency rules at all.

For officials pushing stricter rules, such as Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who wants to beef up the Brussels register, examples like Ireland provide helpful ammunition.

“People should be able to know which special interests try to influence EU policy,” he said.