Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Burton. I will take seven minutes if that is acceptable to the House.

Anyone charged with investigating serious crime has two basic obligations. The first is to assemble all the information needed to persuade a jury that the accused person has committed a crime. The second is to maintain the integrity of that information and of the information-gathering process itself. To acquire full information fairly and to preserve it is not hugely demanding. We know very well that An Garda Síochána eventually learned hard lessons after a long succession of cases in which prosecutions were thrown out because the evidence could not be relied upon. We now discover that another major body charged with the investigation of serious crime seems to have learned nothing about the basic obligation to comply with the law of the Constitution.

We all know that the defendant in a criminal case has rights. It is also important to remember that serious crimes are prosecuted in the name of the people and they, too, have rights. Mr. FitzPatrick has not been convicted of any offence and is entitled to the benefit of his directed acquittal. However, that does not prevent me and most right-thinking people from continuing to believe that company laws were breached in an egregious manner in the management of Anglo Irish Bank. That was the case made on the people's behalf and we expected Mr. FitzPatrick and others to be required to answer it.

Those whose duty it is to prosecute cases on the people's behalf owe a duty to the people to discharge that function professionally and competently. This train wreck of a case seems to reveal staggering incompetence in how agencies of the State do the people's business. We as public representatives are not just entitled but obliged to find out why this happened. I have heard Professor Niamh Brennan, a distinguished author and academic with a lot of expertise in this area, caution that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is fair enough. I am sure the ODCE has done good work over the years. In this particular case, however, the failures have been monumental. I am concerned that there might be wider implications. Our regulatory landscape has many bodies independent of Departments with powers to prosecute summary offences in their own name and to prepare serious prosecutions for the Director of Public Prosecutions. After this omnishambles, I fear there is a risk that other bodies could repeat those mistakes. I believe the review that must now inevitably follow must include an audit of the competence and capacities of all regulatory agencies that are capable of mounting investigations and prosecutions in criminal law.

I repeat my earlier statement that I respect Mr. FitzPatrick's directed acquittal. However, I do not believe that outcome should prevent a full examination as to how and why this happened. The Minister proposes a referral under section 955(1)(a) of the Companies Act 2014. Although that may be a reasonable starting point, it is far from meeting the requirements of this matter in full. In essence, the Minister proposes to ask the director to give an account of his own stewardship, to give his own story. What is really required here is a robust external review of what happened and how it happened.

I have listened to Deputies talk about resources. Although some people want to make political capital out of that issue, the issue of the million breath tests was not a resources problem. Evidence is not shredded because of resources issues. We must demand and expect high standards from those whom we pay well to do the people's business. We need an independent investigation into the workings of the ODCE, a process that has already been called for by my colleague, Deputy Alan Kelly. Once the investigators have completed a review of that body, they should be tasked with repeating the exercise for any other body that has been charged with the enforcement of criminal law. That would include the HSE, the Health and Safety Authority, ComReg, the Central Bank and others.

I hope the Minister will now propose a meaningful engagement with all of us in opposition on these matters. We must have robust mechanisms to carry out investigations into matters that have rocked the foundations of the State. Others have spoken about the economic catastrophe that the people have endured in recent years. The people have marched through that horror story and have asked that things be put right in order that we can have an economic future.

Equally, they have asked for an accounting in order that those in the banking system who, through their actions or inaction, caused the economic catastrophe that befell our people - as well as those who were tasked with oversight and who failed in that - will be held to account. Bluntly, when it comes to the holding to account of those who were responsible for the economic catastrophe, we have a long way to go.

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