Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 26, to delete lines 23 to 37.

I refer to my earlier remark that I am not trying to delay the Bill. This is a matter I raised on Second Stage and in the pre-legislative scrutiny, and I feel very strongly about it. I do not know why we are going to anonymise the details of offenders. I do not know what the benefit is. I am sorry, that is not quite true as I can see that there might be a benefit to the person who is being anonymised, but I do not know what the broader benefit is. The idea is that a person cannot be named because it might jeopardise the stability of financial markets or where it would cause disproportionate damage to the relevant director. This is not afforded to people. We are talking about individuals who have committed offences, which could be very serious in some instances. For the life of me I cannot understand what benefit there will be to the State and to holding companies to account and so forth. If the Bill goes through without amendment, I do not think we will see many names in the public domain.

The Minister of State will say that it is a provision which, hopefully, will not be invoked much, but I believe it will be. It will be used to assist people to hide. Anonymity is obviously very beneficial to the person who is availing of it. I do not understand why directors should be given a free pass on this. I do not want to take the route of saying that if somebody committed a petty crime by going into Dunnes Stores and taking a packet of biscuits the person's name would end up in the newspaper, because we all know that. I want to be proportionate and do like-for-like comparisons, but I cannot think of any scenario whereby a person would be allowed to have his or her details anonymised, much as the person might not wish to have his or her name in the public domain. There is a benefit. If the sanction involves publication of the person's name, it acts as a serious deterrent.

I do not think we should be so deferential to something that may or may not jeopardise the stability of financial markets. That is a guessing game as to whether it would jeopardise financial markets or otherwise.

The important things are that we have the determinant, which is the publication of the name, and that it is done to the greatest extent possible. We should not stitch into legislation the opportunity for people to avoid having their name in the public domain. If these people transgressed to the point of sanction then their names should be made public. We have debated this mater. It is not something that I am inclined to let go because it is important. There is no mechanism for other people to say that publication would have a disproportionate impact on them and I do not know why we should give these directors the benefit of anonymity. I would be grateful to hear the Minister of State's thoughts on this matter.