Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Policy Issues arising from Cemetery Management Bill 2013: Discussion

2:00 pm

Ms Isolde Goggin:

Thank you, Chairman. Deputy Doherty asked whether our investigation meant that there was an acknowledgement from Glasnevin Trust that it had not been doing these things previously. The short answer is "No." The slightly longer answer, in terms of law, is that we do not make any findings of a breach of the law. Our responsibility is to take issues to court. What was being alleged here was an abuse of dominance. We would investigate that and if we felt that it was worthwhile bringing a case to court, we would have to go to the High Court and get it to make a finding of dominance in the first place, a finding of an abuse of dominance and then a direction on remedies - that is, what should be done to fix the situation. Given the costs and the amount of time involved in that process, often what we do is to engage with the parties and try to get them to agree to change the course of action. That is what we often do, and we publicise it. We do not go to court just for the sake of it, because often there is no gain for anybody in that. Sometimes things can be sorted out more quickly with the engagement approach and that is the approach we took in this case.

I am not sure if Deputy Catherine Murphy asked a specific question of our organisation-----