Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will revert to the Deputy with the number. It was looking for 15 staff and it has recruited people for 13 posts. There are two posts to be filled. There may be a timing issue as well and some people may be coming on board, leading to this underspend.

There was a saving of €1.4 million in the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, ODCE, and I gave extra money to it last year specifically in anticipation that the legislation mentioned by the Deputy would be passed and it would be able to employ extra experts or specialists to deal with this forensic accounting. The work done by the office is quite complex and its staff do it very well. There have been delays in enacting the legislation to establish the new agency and the committee is very familiar with those. When the pre-legislative scrutiny is finished, I will be ready to go. We must get the committee's report before we can go any further. I cannot do anything about this until the report comes from this committee. We are ready and stand waiting to deal with that. Another factor in this particular saving was that the provision included in the original Estimate with respect to legal costs was not fully required. Sometimes legal costs do not materialise in a particular year.

There are savings of €500,000 with the CCPC, which essentially arise as a result of expenditure on pay being less than estimated, which is mainly due to the significant staff churn in the CCPC. All these agencies are the same as businesses across the country, in that they are competing for talent. I have offered more resources to the commission to help it carry out the study of public liability insurance mentioned by the Deputy so it is a matter for it to try to recruit the people it needs. We are here to support the commission in that in any way we can.

The Deputy asked about the powers of the CCPC. It currently has a wide range of investigative powers provided for in the Consumer Protection Acts 2007 to 2014, the Competition Acts 2002 to 2017 and relevant statutory provisions made under those Acts. It may also investigate suspected breaches of Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The powers of the CCPC were increased significantly by both the Competition (Amendment) Act 2012 and the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014. For example, there are powers to consider commitments by undertakings to be rules of court and extended elements of the Criminal Justice Act are to apply to serious competition law offences. Very high penalties already apply to criminal offences under the Competition Acts. For example, there are fines of up €5 million or 10% of turnover, whichever is the higher, for an undertaking, and up to ten years in prison for a person, or both.

The Empowering National Competition Authorities, ECN+, directive is due to be transposed by 4 February 2021, and it will give the CCPC additional enforcement powers, including the introduction of non-criminal fines for breaches of European Union competition law. It is my intention to transpose the ECN+ directive by means of primary legislation and I am considering further provisions for inclusion, subject to advice from the Office of the Attorney General. Any additional measures will be reviewed with due regard to the recent recommendations of the Law Reform Commission report on regulatory powers and corporate offences.