The Standards in Public Office Commission has today launched the register of lobbying activity www.lobbying.ie. The Register will identify to the public who is communicating with Government and senior civil and public servants on public policy.
The register is being established under the recently enacted Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015. It will provide a simple, web based register of lobbying activity giving transparency on "who is contacting whom about what".
Those who may need to register lobbying activity can now begin to use the website. They will be obliged by law to register lobbying activity that takes place from September 1st next.
They must make returns of lobbying activity every four months, with the first returns being due by January 21st 2016.
The system was developed by Dovetail Technologies using Web API, ASP.NET MVC and AngularJS. The system uses Foundation as its layout engine, the Open Source Content Management System Umbraco and the Lucene search engine.
See the Irish Times coverage here.
Minister Brendan Howlin at the launch of www.lobbying.ie.