Mr. Paul Kenny:

There are two elements of criminality. One is outright fraud which would of course be immediately referred to the Garda fraud squad if we suspect it is happening. There are other technical crimes. Any breach of the Pensions Act is a criminal offence and may be prosecuted by the Pensions Authority which has the power to levy civil penalties or fines for certain scheduled offences. It also has the power to bring prosecutions in the District Court or through the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Circuit Court if the case is serious enough. It has brought a number of prosecutions, in particular in cases where contributions have been deducted from pension scheme members and retained or misappropriated by employers and not remitted to pension schemes. That was notorious in the construction industry in the early days of my office and the collapse of the construction industry in the wake of the general collapse in the economy aggravated the problem because quite a number of the firms involved went into liquidation or simply threw away the keys and walked. Quite a number of people have been out of pocket as a result.

There have also been a number of tragic cases involving building workers who have died and, because their contributions were not up to date, their families did not receive the mortality benefits they were due. In the course of our investigations we have come across a number of cases where people have tried to fool us as to their past behaviour. One such firm, which we found against, went so far as to ask for a judicial review in the High Court and we have reported in an annual report that Mr. Justice Hedigan said that the conduct of the applicant, namely, the building firm in question, had been characterised throughout by fraud and deceit. We have had quite of number of such cases. The non-remittance of contributions is not confined to the construction industry. There have been instances of it elsewhere but, I am glad to say, not too many.