Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Head 38(1) concerns the office's ability to initiate and conduct investigations on its own initiative or on the basis of a complaint. I will take the first part first and the reference to the office's "own initiative". This also goes back to the earlier point. What capacity and power does the office have to conduct have to conduct investigations on its own initiative? Is the Minister satisfied it will have a budget, staff in place and crucially, the power to do what a regulatory would be able to do like entering a premises, seize documents and getting full information on financial accounts if it feels there are unfair trading practices occurring?