Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is exactly what this needs to be. Everybody knows there were fines levied against the banks for the tracker mortgages scandal. That is not the point but it is a good diversion from the Minister. The point is the Central Bank publicly told us all, but more importantly it told the Minister, and he is not a commentator but the Minister for Finance. He is the only person who can bring forward this type of legislation. He is the only person who can do it and the bank asked him for these powers to hold individuals to account and it has taken four and a half years. The Minister must account for that and he will say there are legal issues and whatnot. I just do not buy that. That is the reality of it. The Minister has form in stalling legislation, putting back legislation, nine months' delay in this and a year's delay in that, whether it is to do with insurance or other areas. We have another piece of legislation, which is incorporated into this, about providing misinformation to the Central Bank and making that an offence.

To get into the bowels of this, the issue of a company actually paying this fine needs to be dealt with in this legislation because the Minister is 100% right that €1 million is beyond the wildest dreams of most people. However, in the case of the people who are, in the main, carrying out these types of activities or sanctions, €1 million is what some of them got as bonuses in financial institutions. Some of them own a large amount of the financial institutions because of shares and so on they get as part of their annual bonus or otherwise so it needs to be dealt with.

Let us say a senior employee takes all reasonable steps to avoid his or her firm committing or continuing to commit a prescribed contravention and that contravention continues but he or she reports that issue further up the chain of command. Would the framework hold those further up the reporting chain accountable and what defines "reasonable steps"? I am referring to somebody more junior who, under the mapping structure, has responsibility for a certain area in the financial institution and reports it to the CEO. If the person more junior has taken reasonable steps to stop it can the CEO be held accountable even though the former is the person responsible for it?