Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their attendance and the invaluable proposals they presented to us. I would like to hear their views on two issues. There was an interesting discussion on the banks and banking licences. We know that a licence can be revoked, but the reality is that some banks are too big to fail. Therefore, the consequences of revoking a bank's licence in the morning would be calamitous for customers and everyone else. I was interested in what Mr. Tom O'Malley had to say about penalties other than financial penalties. In the United States there is a special prosecutor who investigates large-scale cases. Is there a need to have here a special prosecutor or for a regime of that nature to deal with potential future financial scandals or white collar crime? Should we focus on that issue?

The Chairman spoke about whistleblowers and referred to Jonathan Sugarman. We have raised this issue on numerous occasions at this committee. On the tracker mortgage scandal, it is a source of frustration that cases will probably end up in court. Whatever about the procedures of the Central Bank of Ireland and the number of people who have received redress under its direction, I received figures yesterday which showed the cases of 1,200 people who had gone through the system were with the Ombudsman as they felt they had been failed by the regime the Central Bank had put together with individual banks. I have no doubt that when the Ombudsman has completed the investigations, a number of the people mentioned will go to court. We are familiar with cases in which Bank of Ireland employees were completely shafted by the bank which employed them and left high and dry by the regulator and the Central Bank. A class action is important.

In terms of accountability, I have always been of the view that unless one gets whistleblowers from the financial institution, where somebody speaks up, it is very difficult to prosecute. Has the Law Reform Commission considered, as part of the body of work it has done on whistleblowing, the whistleblower reward scheme that has been considered by Britain and is in place in America? There have been some quite interesting results, particularly the high awards for whistleblowers who get paid a portion of the amount that is recovered by the financial institution. Recently, a US whistleblower was awarded $30 million, which gives an idea of the amount recovered on that information. Quite recently another whistleblower refused the $8.5 million that was awarded to that individual from the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and asked instead that the money would be given to the shareholders of the financial institutions. It is not always the case that the incentive is the reason to do it, but in that case, the individual stated that while the incentive was one reasons for coming forward, that person believed the sanction was still too light. I am sorry for going off on a tangent. In the witnesses' view, is there a role for such a whistleblower reward scheme to be introduced in respect of financial criminality and inappropriate financial conduct?