Ms Isolde Goggin:

We estimate that we would need a small increase in resources. It should be borne in mind that what we do at the moment is bring cases to the Central Criminal Court via the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP. Bringing a criminal case is an enormous enterprise. The last case we brought to the Central Criminal Court resulted in a guilty plea and it did not take long. It was the flooring cartel case that I mentioned earlier. We had 41 witnesses lined up. We had taken over 200 investigative actions; the investigation took around two years. Taking a criminal case is already a very substantial enterprise. We are looking at an alternative civil route where the burden of proof is on the basis of the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt. We believe the investigations themselves would not necessarily become more onerous. If we were given responsibility for imposing fines a certain internal separation of powers would be required so that the same people carrying out the investigations were not acting as judge, jury and executioner. We estimate that any increase in the numbers would be in the low single figures.