Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Reckless and criminal misbehaviour in the financial sector destroyed the Irish people's pension fund, exploded our national debt by a factor of eight and inflicted untold suffering on the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens. Like the Greeks and Portuguese, we have had a lost decade of cuts and suffering. It is particularly galling to citizens that only a tiny number of bankers have been held to account. We have had very few high profile cases, such as the actions taken against Anglo Irish Bank executives Willie McAteer, John Bowe and Sean FitzPatrick, as well as Denis Casey, former chief executive officer of Irish Life and Permanent. As in the UK, the scale of the financial disaster was not remotely matched by prosecutions of those with responsibility. By contrast, over the same last decade, in Iceland the total number of senior Icelandic bankers sentenced for fiduciary and market manipulation crimes now stands at 29. Only last summer, the UK brought the first criminal case against a global bank chief executive when charges were brought against John Varley and three other Barclays executives.

The experience of Jonathan Sugarman, the risk manager at Unicredit Bank Ireland in 2007, and other banking whistleblowers clearly indicates we need fundamental reform of the Central Bank Act 1942 and all subsequent banking regulation. I know the Ceann Comhairle is familiar with the matters raised by Mr. Sugarman and the extraordinary way in which neither the Central Bank, the Garda nor any other authorities investigated his complaint.

I warmly welcome the Central Bank (Amendment) Bill 2018 and commend Deputy Pearse Doherty and Sinn Féin for bringing it forward. The Bill significantly expands the powers of the Central Bank to conduct inquiries into the suspected provision of false and misleading information either deliberately or by omission to the Central Bank by bankers and officials in the financial sector. It also provides for administrative sanctions and creates an offence of providing false or misleading information to the national banking authority. Section 2 of the Bill inserts a new Part III D into the Central Bank Act 1942, which rightly provides for a summary conviction sanction of a class A fine and imprisonment for up to 12 months, and for a conviction on indictment for a fine of up to €250,000 and imprisonment up to five years. These are very welcome provisions in response to the tracker mortgage fraud and the litany of banking and financial scandals over many decades.

Since 2008 in particular, citizens have been astonished at the apparent immunity for criminal misbehaviour in the banking and financial sector. For example, people were first startled by the settlement agreement between the then financial regulator and Quinn Insurance in October 2008, when the regulator found serious breaches and contraventions by Quinn Insurance under the Insurance Acts, including failure to notify the financial regulator prior to providing loans to related companies. Of course, there were fines but constituents were surprised that no court prosecutions followed with such a serious financial case. They drew our attention again to Part III C of the 1942 Central Bank Act. Section 33AT(1) of Part III C of course lays down that when the regulatory authority imposes a monetary penalty, "the financial service provider or other person concerned is not liable to be prosecuted or punished for the offence under that law." As a result, citizens have complained that Ireland continues to have a separate legal system for bankers administered in secret.

I asked the former Minister, Deputy Noonan, if he would amend or remove section 33AT(1) of Part III C of the 1942 Act but he replied that it could not be removed because it upholds the principle of ne bis in idem, or double jeopardy, and that therefore no criminal prosecution may be brought against a financial service provider or person concerned in the management of a financial service provider if the prescribed contravention in question has already been the subject of an inquiry under the administrative sanctions procedure. The Ceann Comhairle might remember that when I was a spokesperson on marine issues, we were trying to bring forward administrative sanctions for workers in the fisheries industry but the Ceann Comhairle's former colleague, Noel Dempsey, ruthlessly opposed it. Nevertheless, we have that system for the bankers.

Last summer, as the tracker mortgage scandal became more and more outrageous, I asked our Oireachtas Library and Research Service to prepare a paper entitled, Legal Issues Relevant to a Proposal to Repeal Section 33AT of the Central Bank Act 1942. The paper, of course, identified the role of double jeopardy but this excellent study also refers to a recent decision of the High Court in Purcell v. Central Bank of Ireland, which suggests that a repeal of section 33AT would not cause Central Bank inquiries and criminal charges in respect of the same acts to breach the rule of double jeopardy or ne bis in idem. I commend Deputy Doherty again on this fine piece of legislation.

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