Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am. The other speakers will be here shortly.

Fianna Fáil supports the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Bill 2017. It is important that the House moves collectively to strengthen anti-white-collar crime through the measures contained in the Bill. The current legislation governing corruption is too unwieldy and because of recent court cases it is prudent to strengthen the current legislation. Following the Aylmer judgment the Irish people were shocked by the poor handling of the procedural process which resulted in somebody being let off despite the weight of evidence. It is important that we move as many of the academics have proposed in recent years and try to unify the fragmented system we have relating to white-collar crime, whereby the State can take on people who are acting in the shadows of strength that they see in the corporate world.

When we consider the different State agencies we have, for example the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Health and Safety Authority and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, we need a cross-departmental approach in addition to the many positive measures in the Bill. We need to strengthen the powers to combat white-collar crime through co-ordination across Government so that the State can take on people who have acted inappropriately and in a corrupt manner. That deserves further attention.

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It is important also to resource the implementation of this legislation. As we saw in recent court cases many of the procedural errors that were found were due to staff vacancies over lengthy periods in the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement. There were too many gaps unfortunately left unaddressed by the previous Government in terms of those vacancies. There is no point in talking about white-collar crime if we do not have the staff employed and resourced to address the issues and also to follow the process and procedure to see a criminal conviction brought through the courts. It is not good enough that basic errors are made whereby people's constitutional rights may be impacted which gives them an exit strategy to the detriment of people's confidence in public administration and in government. It is important that we have well resourced agencies that ensure the delivery of proper implementation of white-collar measures.

This Bill is based on a general scheme that was published in 2012 and approved by the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality in 2013. I commend the Minister, as the new Minister for Justice and Equality, on reintroducing the Bill and I hope to see it progress through this House. However, his predecessor clearly sidelined it as a priority measure and was not overly interested, in the context of her work agenda, in seeing white-collar measures tackled and progressed through this House. The recent court case and the Minister's recent announcement have seen at least an added focus to this area.

The outcome of the 127 day long case against Seán FitzPatrick was a damning indictment of the State's capacity to investigate and prosecute white-collar crime. The inadequacy of the State to combat white-collar crime was laid bare in the criticisms by Judge Aylmer. The handling of this case, unfortunately, shattered public confidence in the prosecution of white-collar crime. As a Parliament and an Oireachtas, it is fundamental that we add to many of the positive measures that are threaded throughout this Bill. We can learn from the fragmented approach we have across the agencies of the State. Agencies of State have been created and codified from the 1980s onwards, which in many ways was a post-Whitehall model of public administration, with the agentification of Departments. The problem with that has been that when policy and responsibility are decentralised and in times of recession when there are vacancies and difficulties in resourcing matters of significant procedural importance, gaps occur, which is what we saw happen in the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement. That is what shattered public confidence in the prosecution of white-collar crime in this country. We know that this was only the tip of the iceberg. There are many other instances of corruption which are not seeing the light of day or the courts because of the lack of legislation in this area.

The Minister mentioned that this is a consolidation of legislation from 1889 to 2010. The Irish State and successive parties in government, including my own party, over many years should have taken more measures. We need to strengthen measures to tackle white-collar crime. A Sinn Féin Bill, the Multi-Party Action Bill, was introduced yesterday to address the need to counterbalance the disproportionate power between banks and individuals in order that individuals in very vulnerable scenarios could take on the financial institutions which have more solicitors than many of the biggest law firms. Similarly, this Bill is about empowering and restoring public confidence in our capacity to take on those who have breached the law and committed a criminal offence. In many cases people who have committed minor crimes are put away for significantly long periods while those who have committed major crimes, the costs of which run to billions of euro, are left untouched because of procedural anomalies. That is not good enough in the context of the administration of justice. We as a party will work with the Minister and every other party and Independent group to strengthen measures and toughen the position around white-collar crime. It is important that this legislation is progressed but also that additional measures are introduced.

As the Minister mentioned, the purpose of the Bill is to modernise Irish anti-corruption laws and it represents good legislative housekeeping as it repeals and replaces the Prevention of Corruption Acts, consolidating existing legislation that dates back many years. It goes further and introduces new and stronger penalties, as the Minister detailed. The Bill also gives effect to some of the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal, which is welcome, and we need to see further legislative proposals in this area and those recommendations fully implemented and codified, whenever possible.

Section 5 provides for offences of bribe giving and bribe taking within both the public and private sector, including those in voluntary bodies such as sporting or charitable organisations. Section 6 incorporates the active and passing trading in influence. These are measures that up to now have been left in a legal vacuum, which have been an anomaly, without receiving full attention. We know from previous judgments that it was impossible to prosecute to the benefit of upholding the law and protecting against white-collar crime. I am reminded of the Begley case involving the evasion of import taxes on garlic where the individual was put away by a High Court judge. Many individuals, because of their own vulnerability, have been left behind bars for many months and years because of the willingness of the courts and the Director of Public Prosecutions to put away people for relatively minor offences. However, in the case of people who have cost the State billions of euro, the weakness in measures to tackle white-collar crime has resulted in a lack of public confidence in this area. We fully support the addressing of that situation.

We need to go beyond this measure, which is a welcome one. I will fully support the Bill at the justice committee and we will amend it to improve it. It is important for the Minister to move beyond this Bill and create a unified strategy to move away from the current mismatched approach across State agencies and that the corporate elements of Irish life can see an approach that goes across every Department and every level of government.

Currently we have a poor record on white-collar crime relative to other European jurisdictions. The Minister mentioned some of the recommendations and requirements from the Council of Europe Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, the EU anti-corruption convention, the UN Convention Against Corruption and the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. There are plenty of recommendations and requirements that we have in that context. Some of my colleagues, for example, Deputy Niall Collins, felt that many of the measures the Minister announced in the past two weeks were very much a regurgitation of previous white-collar measures. It is important the Minister moves away from the regurgitation around the press and progresses legislation beyond what he is doing here today, which I believe will receive the full support of this House.

My colleague, Deputy Mattie McGrath, wants to speak and my colleagues, Deputy James Browne and Jim O'Callaghan, will take some of the Rural Independent Group's time.

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