Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 13, to delete lines 6 to 11 and substitute the following:

“ “(3) For the purposes of enabling the making of reports, all employers shall establish, maintain and operate internal reporting channels and

procedures for the making of such reports and for follow-up (in this Act referred to as ‘internal reporting channels and procedures’).”.

The amendment proposes to delete lines 6 to 11 and to substitute: "For the purposes of enabling the making of reports, all employers shall establish, maintain and operate internal reporting channels and procedures for the making of such reports and for follow-up...".

To make it clear, this particular amendment is in respect of the exclusion of companies with less than 50 employees. I do not believe that the reporting requirements of this Bill are particularly onerous or that they place a significant administrative burden on companies. I would be concerned that removing companies with less than 50 employees could cause greater risks. Specifically, these kinds of companies can be dealing with very large sums of money but may have very few employees.

They might even be serving clients who could potentially be engaging in abuse or regulatory avoidance. I am thinking of the Cum-Ex scandal, the revelations in the Panama Papers, the Russian connected special purpose vehicles using the IFSC and so on. We have a situation where there could be large amounts of money and it could have a large impact but it would relate to firms with very small numbers of employees. Therefore, it is important to include it for all firms and not limit it to more than 50 employees since some of these firms may have small numbers of employees but deal with large sums of money.