I move amendment No. 3:
In page 9, between lines 19 and 20, to insert the following:
"21. —No member of the Board or member of a committee of the Board shall have access to information which is or could be, in the opinion of the chief officer, of immediate commercial use in trade or business unless——
(a) it is being made simultaneously available generally or
(b) it is being made simultaneously available to all other members of the Board or committee of the Board either at or in association with a meeting of the Board or committee of the Board, as the case may be.".
The purpose of this amendment is to prevent the chairman or a member of the board from making use of his position, and the access to information he has by virtue of being on the board, to gain information which gives him an advantage over his trading competitors in Ireland.
An amendment of this sort is more necessary in the case of a board like the CBF than it is in the case of other boards. One of the essential functions of the CBF is obtaining and passing on useful marketing information about openings for trade in respect of particular types of meat in particular parts of the globe. If we have a situation, as we will have, that people who are directly involved financially in the meat trade are members of the board, and by virtue of being members of the board they can get this information which is coming to the board at public expense, and if members of the board, being in the milk trade, or being in the meat trade, and being therefore financially interested in that trade, are able by being members of the board to get that information in advance of other Irish people in the same trade, and use it, that would be a serious abuse amounting almost to corruption.
It is essential that no person should have any advantage over anybody else in so far as his own personal dealings are concerned by being a member of this board. It must be clearly the case that members of the board cannot make use of their position to give them an advantage which nobody else in the trade has. The amendment provides that information which is of immediate commercial use in trade or business should only be made available to members of the board (1) where it is being made simultaneously available to anyone else who wishes to obtain it, in other words, any member of the trade ringing up the CBF could get that information at exactly the same time the member of the CBF can get it, or alternatively, where for one reason or another—and I have no doubt there will be cases where this will be so—the information cannot at that time be made generally available.
If it is being made available to one member of the board it must be made available to all members of the board at the same time. This ensures that, in the event of a member of the board who is interested in the trade getting this information, other members of the board who are not interested in the trade and who, perhaps, represent the public interest, will get that information. Therefore, it will not be possible for people by back door methods to get information of immediate commercial use to themselves which other people are not able to get in the same trade. In the absence of this provision there will be problems of support for the board by people who are not members of it. They will feel that members of their trade who are members of the board are getting advantages. In my view that would be an unsatisfactory situation. The amendment was introduced to ensure that full support would be given to the board and its operations by all people in the trade.
An amendment of this sort should be incorporated in any Bill which is providing for an agency like CBF. I hope the Minister will understand that, in moving the amendment, I am making a point which is generally applicable to other boards as well as to CBF, and that he will accept it.