Mr. Raymond Byrne:

In terms of overlap and liaison, there is no doubt that there would be very important liaison if a corporate crime agency was to be established. The report that we carried out did a lot of consultation with people who had been involved in examining some of the very serious issues that arise on the regulatory side. What we discovered from some of the regulators was that they were very capable of examining those areas for which they had functional responsibility, in terms of regulating banks and other financial institutions. The competition commission has functional responsibility to look at competition law, mergers and takeovers, and various other bodies which have a regulatory role in various economic sectoral areas. What they all said as well was that there was a risk that even though they might be looking at all of those detailed areas, certain areas such as major fraud matters, which would not be within their responsibility as regulators could in a sense fall between the cracks. That is why the commission made a recommendation that there ought to be an agency that would be responsible for looking at those areas. That would be quite separate from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, ODCE, as it currently stands or the corporate enforcement authority if it is to be established under this Bill, because the corporate enforcement authority would still just have responsibility for the enforcement of the Companies Act, as amended.

That was the issue that arose in the consultations we had with a number of the regulators that we consulted with, and therefore the conclusion the commission reached was that it recommended the need for a separate agency that would be responsible for examining issues that fall outside the remit of the existing financial and economic regulators.