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

I agree with the Deputy's observations in the round. It is worth putting on record that when it comes to the ODCE's role in investigations relating to the Anglo Irish Bank debacle or saga, five separate investigations resulted in four trials, all of which resulted in persons being convicted on indictment of criminal offences. While there is a strong focus on the Seán FitzPatrick case, which ended on 23 May 2017, and what went wrong there, and while for very good reasons there is great public concern and annoyance about that, it is often forgotten that of the five investigations, there were trials and convictions in four. One would not necessarily have that impression from the way it is sometimes reported in public, but it was not a categorical failure by the ODCE by any means. It secured prosecutions and convictions in four of five of the cases.

Regulation is something I want to have a closer look at in my time in this brief. I know there is a great deal of regulation on business, which is very tough on small businesses in particular because they do not have HR and legal departments and so on. It can be very frustrating and it has made it difficult to do business. At the same time, I am conscious that one person's regulation is another person's rights, and what businesses will often complain about in terms of regulation is often what other people consider to be their employment rights, environmental rights, health and safety and so on. I would at some point like to carry out a wider regulatory review, perhaps using the standard cost model, and take a look at all the regulation imposed on business as a whole to see if we could streamline it in some way, even if that just meant reducing the numbers of forms that have to be filled in or of licences that have to be obtained.

These things would not undermine the polity of regulation but might make it easier for people to manage and administer.