Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have specific point to make before I comment on a similar point to the one the Chair has raised. The Olympic ticketing issue seems like a small one for the commission of investigation to investigate. I suggest that we ask for a full schedule of that, because I would like to look at it in slightly more detail.

On the question of how we do business in this country, other jurisdictions have taken a different approach. The Social Democrats looked at an example in Australia. We proposed an anti-corruption agency on foot of that where there would be the prospect of a permanent office of investigation. After an inquiry is held, we lose the kind of information that would inform our consideration of the question of whether we would do it differently if we were to start it again. The ides of having a permanent office of investigation is about retaining that kind of institutional memory. It looks to us like that worked well in the example that we used from Australia. There are other examples from around the world that are worth looking at. It is a huge amount of money. Sometimes there is a degree of penny-pinching done in regulation in this country. I refer to issues like mica and the regulation of quarries. We pay for this anyway, but we tend to pay it in retrospect and then it appears to be a scandal. This is opposed to the predict-and-prevent approach, which you have to put money into but is a better way for the State to function. There are good examples in other jurisdictions of how they regulate various aspects of public life, including when it comes to planning.

We have not had many tribunals of inquiry. The most recent one was the inquiry into the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation's first and only transaction, which was the sale of Siteserv. The approach taken in that case - it was done behind closed doors because of the bespoke legislation - did not end up reducing the number of legal people who were involved. It ended up not really being equivalent to an inquiry under the 2004 Act, which sought to reduce the level of legal involvement. I am not sure that this is the forum in which this will happen, but I think this committee may well have a view on it. We could write to the Taoiseach about the importance of looking at this issue collectively, learning from the past and putting systems in place. If we put good, robust systems in place, we will reduce the need for inquiries. In addition, when inquiries happen, they should happen in a way that is cost-effective and timely. When they go on for years, it is a huge frustration. Very often, there is a feeling that people are not held to account by virtue of the fact that it is a tribunal. In some cases, a corruption issue should be dealt with in the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, or the corporate enforcement agency we are hearing about now. That was supposed to be in place last January. This is just a case in point. That was supposed to be fully in place, with all of the gardaí in place, last January, but they are still recruiting for the gardaí at the end of the year. That kind of thing is gigantically frustrating. It shows the difference between how we treat white-collar crime and how we deal with crimes of other natures.