Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Ferris for sharing time with me.

I welcome the Criminal Justice Bill 2011. One of its main introductory tenets is that justice delayed is justice denied and that people who carried out wrongdoing are amenable for that wrongdoing.

In the past number of days and weeks we have had reminders of how unfair has been the treatment of various persons and parts of society. I recall reading a case in the courts about a year ago of a mother of a couple of children who was not well - she was depressed and on medication, and attending hospital - which was reported by Ms Mary Carolan in The Irish Times. The woman had come before the courts because she had taken out a credit card with a credit card company and had very quickly, because she was unwell with depression, run up her full credit limit. After some legal letters for collection of the amount outstanding, which was under €1,500, which she had ignored because she was not well, she was brought before the courts and convicted, and she was incarcerated in prison. There was at least another solicitor who was not involved in the case who had observed what had happened and knew that a grave injustice had occurred, and who brought an appeal against the sentence. The second judge, in the rehearing of the case, saw that what had happened was absurd. The credit card company had carried out no checks whatsoever on the documentation, which, incidentally, had been filled out by this lady in hospital without proper preparation or regard to any of her circumstances. That improper documentation had led to the uncollectible credit balance, and the non-payment of it. Despite some reminders over a period of months, she ended up in prison and that was wrong. That was a case of the procedures of a credit card company just being used in a mechanistic, irresponsible and negligent way.

That sort of negligence travelled up and down through financial institutions over the past number of years, right up to board level and the people who should have been forming professional judgment on the accounts of banks and insurance companies who ignored the principles of prudential accounting. While both sides of balance sheets may have added up and there were no technical arithmetic errors, and neurotic internal rules might have been applied in overview terms, there is a strong case that professional negligence had occurred and by any measure, the result of that negligence has led to the financial pain and destruction being felt by families throughout the economy. The remarks last week of the Master of the High Court, Mr. Edmund Honohan SC, and the remarks of Mr. Justice Peter Kelly about the delays in processing cases in the courts, show that while there is not grievous bodily harm victims or visible destruction of property, for example, by means of fire, there is significant damage in our society.

The Bill contains elements that are particularly valuable in this regard. Section 19 brings the responsibility to everybody in financial institutions and in business, and for that matter anywhere, that if there is to his or her knowledge something amiss, something wrong, something that could be criminal, it is his or her duty and responsibility to refer it to the authorities and to ensure that the authorities do something about it, and only reasonable excuses would be allowed in that case. The penalty for ignoring one's responsibility could be five years in jail or limitless fines. That is good. That is a wake-up call for everybody.

There were some other cases in the past few years the results of which were breathtaking, for instance, the insider trading case of DCC, where the Supreme Court on the appeal hearing, after the High Court saw that there was no insider trading, unanimously decided that there was an insider trading case. In delivering the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Justice Fennelly stated, to make it easy for everybody to understand, that insider trading is a fraud on the market. Nobody had any excuse for not understanding what was determined in that case. The Director of Corporate Enforcement, Mr. Appleby, was impelled on that decision to have conducted an investigation on the company to see if there were grounds for a criminal prosecution or to determine exactly what had occurred and Mr. Bill Shipsey SC produced a report, which took about a year and cost approximately €1.4 million. That report was limp and it merely concluded that there was no further case to be made which is staggering when one considers that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision had been that a prima facie insider trading case had taken place and that that was a fraud on the market. No wonder the public is bewildered by these sort of outcomes. I, therefore, again, welcome the Criminal Justice Bill because it tightens up the sort of areas where fog and vagueness had reigned.

I return to one point on which I touched. Where there has been negligence - no doubt there was because the collapse of the financial system was so considerable that it could only have occurred with wilful negligence and contributory negligence - it begs the question as to what we need to do to address professional poor conduct. That is another area that can be brought in under the microscope or viewfinder because we do not want the law courts to be where one gets lots of law and no justice. They are the called the courts of justice, they are also called the law courts, and in recent times we have a lot more law and very little justice. I would ask all Members of the House on both sides to think about these matters when we are examining the nuts and bolts and technical construction of the legislation in these areas.

One point that arose this morning in our discussion took my breath away. There was a question asked as to whether AIB had sought the Government's views on the request possibly to consider salaries or remuneration to top management at the bank that might breach the €500,000 per annum ceiling.

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