Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 19 February 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

General Scheme of the Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018: Discussion

Mr. Ian Drennan:

I will defer to Detective Inspector O'Keeffe in a moment. One thing we have learned is that one needs horses for courses. We have seven or eight accountants with very impressive backgrounds in financial services, private practice, forensics, law enforcement and a whole range of areas. They are the workhorses, if they would pardon that phrase, for analysing complex financial data. The interaction is that they analyse the data and prepare what we call interview packs, which would then be handed over to Detective Inspector O'Keeffe and his colleagues who would do the interviewing of witnesses, or suspects, or whatever the case may be. Generally speaking, if it is a witness, one of our Garda colleagues would lead the witness interview and might be accompanied by an accountant if it is a particularly complex issue. There is a complementarity there.

Detective Inspector O'Keeffe might want to say something about the skill set of our Garda colleagues.