Ethics in Public Office
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Cian O'Callaghan (SD), Dublin Bay North

When the Minister issued a press release on it this week, I was genuinely delighted. I thought this was finally coming to fruition and completion but then I read the press release and saw that was not the case. The rationale the Minister is giving is that we are going to move from a paper-based system to an online system, which is absolutely correct but at the same time, we are not able to get on with what was completed four years ago. We are in 2026 now. How does it take so long to develop a digitised system? Meanwhile, year after year, more and more public bodies escape the provisions of the ethics legislation. Is the Minister not really concerned that we now have 49 public bodies not covered by the ethics legislation? Under his watch this is getting worse, as year after year more and more public bodies are set up but are not named as being covered. This is urgent. Surely the Minister agrees this is urgent. Every single public body should be covered by the ethics legislation. Surely there should be no more delays in that. If the Minister is not able to get his act together on the digitisation, he could always come back to it later and get it done through additional legislation.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28