Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The premise of the Deputy's question is correct. Although I cannot prove it, I suspect that breaches of company, competition and tax law are considerable and much greater in number than we realised. Obviously, there are various bodies that pursue the perpetrators. The Revenue Commissioners are very well resourced and do a really great job. There are also the CCPC and the ODCE, which is the weaker and least resourced of the three bodies pursuing the different types of white-collar crimes that are committed. This Bill has two objectives - setting up the agency in its own right like the CCPC and Revenue Commissioners and giving the agency the resources to pursue breaches of company law. I met the director only during the week, as did the Minister of State, Deputy Troy. The director is relatively happy with the additional resources the agency is getting. Even though the Bill has not been passed, the budget has been increased and there are additional civil servants, forensic accountants and so on. The agency is also getting additional gardaí. It will have eight gardaí at the technical level. The director said a genuine issue arises over expertise because the really skilled people in areas such as forensic accounting and the really clever lawyers in this space can command the really big bucks.

Potentially, they can command those really big bucks from people who may be breaching these company laws. Quite frankly, it is always a problem with the public service that we are competing with a private sector that can pay really well. When we start paying people in the public service really well, we get understandable criticism from people who are on more modest salaries. However, we think this will give us greater flexibility around that and a greater ability to hire people on a contract basis, for example, to do particular jobs. One thing Revenue has done very successfully is to get some people back from the private sector who are maybe more motivated by public service and lifestyle issues than by the big bucks and I would like to see this body doing a bit of that too.

On the powers, we have had a talk about this between Departments and across Government so there is a plan for a new police powers Bill. That Bill will give additional powers around getting access to electronic information and the cloud and all of those things. The ODCE would like that but we think that rather than doing it on a piecemeal basis we should give that power across the board, to the Garda, the director and other enforcement bodies and do it through a different piece of legislation.