Mr Troy on Thursday produced a comprehensive statement of things that should have been listed on his Dáil declarations, featuring no less than seven bullet points of items which he is now seeking to update on the SIPO register retrospectively, not to mention another eight points relating to items which the minister feels he doesn’t have to declare, but which he is doing “to ensure full transparency”.

Mr Troy has now apologised “unreservedly” and acknowledged “fully” the “seriousness” of his entries with SIPO.

However, it was one of his interactions with SIPO this week which made you wonder just how committed the commission is to public transparency.

The initial revelations regarding the minister published by 'The Ditch' website suggested that he had failed to declare a number of properties in his ownership (Mr Troy said he had not been aware he needed to submit properties which he no longer owned at year’s end], but also that he had not listed the fact he had sold some of those properties to local authorities.

Ethics legislation

Under Irish ethics legislation, elected representatives are required to declare contracts with public bodies worth in excess of €6,500 (the properties Mr Troy sold to Longford and Westmeath County Councils sold for €393,000 in total).

However, SIPO subsequently told Mr Troy that he did not have to declare the house sales, because the contracts section only refers to ‘goods and services’, and a house is neither goods nor a service.

Now that is a neat trick. The house in Longford was sold to the local authority for the provision of social housing. Is social housing not a service?

And Ireland’s 2010 Vat Act describes “goods” as being “all movable and immovable objects”. By that definition, it is very hard to see how a house or property does not fit the description.

Leaving all that aside, what penalties are in place for TDs or senators who get their declarations wrong? Well, none.

Which begs a further question: If there are no penalties for consistently getting your lists of assets wrong, and if selling houses to local authorities at a rate of knots is not something that needs to be declared, then why would any TD bother to fill the declaration register out properly at all?

Or, put more succinctly, what is the point of SIPO?

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy has now complained to SIPO repeatedly about Mr Troy’s alleged ethics breaches, and has requested an investigation as to whether those breaches were “simply accidental”.

“There must be consequences for breaching ethics legislation,” Mr Murphy said on Thursday.

SIPO needs to be properly resourced and empowered to quickly investigate complaints and sanction breaches. Unfortunately, all of the evidence suggests they are not.

Given how slapdash the register of interests is, Mr Troy’s exploits and the attention around same might have quite a few public representatives looking nervously at their own returns.

Also, there is a difference between what you are obliged to disclose, and what you should, or what the court of public opinion says you should, reveal. It is very hard to argue that a TD repeatedly making money off the taxpayer by selling properties to councils is not something that should be publicly disclosed.

However, SIPO says that is in fact the case. Which brings us round full circle: If it is not ensuring reasonable levels of transparency for the electorate, what exactly is the point of SIPO?