Ms Isolde Goggin:

I personally would welcome a root and branch discussion about the way we enforce white-collar crime in this country. We have serious issues which are not down to any one individual agency. I accept there have been failures of process in some agencies, but the way in which we enforce our legislation is through the courts. The Oireachtas creates offences.

For an indictable offence, we take the case to the DPP, who decides on whether to bring it to court on indictment. That is an extremely long, difficult and expensive process. It can be done. We recently secured convictions in the Central Criminal Court for cartel offences. To be honest, however, the level of sentencing between an indictable offence and a summary offence is sometimes not that different. That issue could be examined.

More and more, regulators in other countries and Ireland have powers to impose fines on bodies that they regulate without necessarily having to go through the courts. There is always the option to appeal to the courts and courts must be there as a backstop, but the Central Bank, for instance, is able to impose fines on regulated entities whereas we do not have that power. We are told that it goes with a regulated industry. When one is authorised by the Central Bank, ComReg or the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, one is joining a club of regulated industries and signs up to its rules, including subjecting oneself to the club's fining powers. Compared with regulatory offences, we find that having to take a criminal case on indictment for everything is-----