Mr. Raymond Byrne:

Of course, it is a matter for the committee to decide whether the conclusions the commission made in its report should be implemented. I refer to our analysis of international best practice, including many reports that have been published by the OECD and at EU level. We then looked at the most recent literature we could find, some of which has been carried out by Professor Chris Hodges in Oxford, for example. That information and that research indicate that these kinds of powers are the most effective in order to generate the kinds of results that would deliver as far as possible the kinds of regulatory systems we all want, whereby organisations being regulated live up to those kinds of standards, whether in respect of compliance with company law or financial services law. That was certainly the evidence we had from a lot of the submissions we had received and the literature we looked at. It would appear that this is not included in the draft heads. Again, we are very conscious that these heads are going into the 2014 Act, but our understanding is that while the existing powers in the 2014 Act give extensive powers, for example, to company inspectors appointed by the High Court, the ODCE and the proposed corporate enforcement authority would not have those powers.