Regulating lobbyists

Gary Murphy at Dublin City University has a good piece about regulating lobbyists in the Republic in today’s Irish Times. Am Blackberry blogging from the Enterprise so can only link you to the paper’s home page http://www.irishtimes.com .

I agree with Professor Murphy, there should be statutory regulation in Ireland. The UK, including NI, has a system of voluntary registration through the APPC. Weber Shandwick is part of it but many of our competitors are not. This creates an obvious uneven playing field between those of us who publish the details of our Public Affairs clients and those who do not.

The situation is even worse in the North where only a tiny number of consultants are in the APPC, leaving the vast majority of Assembly lobbying entirely unregulated.

It is time to have a serious debate about lobbying in the South but while we are at it we should take a good long look about what needs to be done in the North too.