Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

This Bill is urgent because we are fulfilling the commitments under the directive. As I said, we have tailored it to suit our circumstances, up to a point. We had very robust money laundering legislation heretofore, but this will tighten it yet again and ensure we conform with the rest of the European Union.

As regards consolidation, it will not happen in the area of money laundering per se, but I have indicated to my Department in the past couple of months that a lot of what is in the public domain regarding potential fraud in money transactions and potential corruption is covered by legislation in the area of company or criminal law. Even the area of consumer law covers the issue.

I have asked my Department to bring forward a consolidated Bill on white collar crime and have a one-stop piece of legislation which may cut across a number of Departments and agencies such as the Financial Regulator and others. It would be important for us to ensure that there is one piece of legislation which determines what offences are possible not only for our own sake, but also for the various agencies which examine this type of legislation. There are a number of committees - I will not call them watchdogs - under the various international bodies to which we subscribe that examine the spread of legislation in this area.

To a certain extent, we have inherited the English model and have amended, in a relatively piecemeal way, the legislation over the years. I have done this in a number of areas in the Department. For example, I have asked my officials to introduce consolidated legislation on the bail laws, the sale of alcohol and corruption and white collar crime. It will be a mammoth task because I will be delving into other areas, in particular company law. It is necessary and that work is about to start.

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