James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentations. As previous speakers said, there is a sense out there that corporate white-collar crime does not get pursued in the same way as other crime.

I very much welcome the report and many of the recommendations in it. The witnesses speak specifically to two areas where they feel the power is available to the Central Bank to impose administrative financial sanctions of a serious quantum such as €10 million or 10% of turnover and €1 million to the individual and the power to enter into regulatory compliance agreements but those are not available to the regulatory authorities. I very much agree with the suggestions in that regard.

I also very much like the idea of being able to do the equivalent of the Probation Act to enter into a stay of execution and see whether a company will clean up its act. That is not being in any way soft on white-collar crime. There is a significant problem at the moment with insurance, which I accept is not the remit of the witnesses. We called for a dedicated insurance fraud squad in the Garda. What the witnesses are speaking to here is another group within the Garda who would be specifically looking at corporate crime. Would that corporate crime agency lie within the Garda or would it be parallel to the Garda? How would it operate with the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB? Who would it answer to? I ask the witnesses to answer those questions.

I do not know if the witnesses are in a position to answer this question, but do they have any information available now or it could be provided later on how many convictions with serious consequences, that is, prison sentences, have been made for corporate crime in the years 2014 to 2018? Have we seen the benefit of the 2014 Act in terms of it having a net effect? I speak as someone who works in both sectors. There is a vote in the Seanad. I do not want to be rude and not be present for the reply to my questions.