Mr. Ian Drennan:

I met the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, once. I met the previous Minister, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, once. I met the former Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, once and I met the former Minister, Deputy Bruton, once. That would be in recent years. I have regular meetings with the Department on a range of issues, including on the outcome of the case he referred to, the Bill and more routine matters. Either my colleagues or I meet regularly. For the record, it is important to say I have an excellent working relationship with my opposite number in the Department, and have had for many years.

On the question of whether the enforcement of company law is robust, I believe it is. As I said in my opening remarks, through our supervision and direct actions vis-à-visinsolvent companies, we have almost 1,900 people sanctioned through either restriction or disqualification. I am aware that the Deputy has asked a number of questions about this in the past and he has got a lot of data on it. In recent years, and certainly after the Anglo Irish Bank developments, even when the investigations finished, trials were enormously time-consuming in terms of supporting the prosecution and so on, particularly in terms of Garda resources and supporting the disclosure process which is ongoing through trial. Having got that behind us and, as I alluded to earlier, having hired a number of new staff, we are now looking at a range of complex matters that arise from various avenues, assisted by our Garda colleagues. This means we have now got to a point where, in addition to referring files to the DPP, on which process I touched with Deputy Kelleher, and in addition to having recommendations for company law charges, it is now quite common to have recommendations for a possible offence under theft and fraud offences legislation. More recently, we had charges directed by the DPP under criminal justice money laundering legislation because many of these things go hand in hand.