Tony Gregory (Dublin Central, Independent)

Does the Minister of State have a view on the role of the Criminal Assets Bureau? In the past ten years approximately €5.5 million worth of assets have been returned to the Exchequer, which seems incredibly low, maybe because of the seven year freeze on assets.

What does the Minister of State think of the recommendation of the financial action task force, the EU monitoring group, that the seven year freeze be reduced to three to make CAB's powers more effective? Does he feel that in an area as heavily affected by drug dealing and related crime as his constituency a local unit of the CAB would be another effective tool against those activities? We need to do more to take the assets from drug dealers at all levels because their affluence attracts young people into the drug-crime spiral.

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