Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The end of February saw the first ever prosecution resulting in a conviction in the UK of a corporate body for failure to prevent bribery. The case concerned the managing director of a company paying a £10,000 bribe to secure a contract worth £6 million. This was the first test of section 7 of the UK's Bribery Act, which provides that a corporate body is guilty of an offence if a person associated with it has been found guilty of corruption. Equivalent Irish legislation, namely the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Bill, came before the justice committee in March this year. The Bill incorporates the "failure to prevent" principle, copying the UK legislation, which is welcome. The legislation will be pointless and a mere fig-leaf reform, however, if the Government does not create an independent body with the necessary legal power to enforce the Bill's provision.

Sadly, the legislation may have come too late for some organisations. We know for a fact that NAMA's chairperson and chief executive were aware of corruption taking place within the organisation to which they turned a blind eye. When it was discovered that a NAMA employee had been leaking debtor portfolio details to investment funds, NAMA's chair and chief executive called in Deloitte, not the Garda, to investigate. By coincidence, NAMA has, since its inception, paid Deloitte over €7 million in fees for receivership duties. If this is not a conflict of interest, I am not sure what would be. We know of ten more cases where senior executives in NAMA became aware of corruption by staff but dealt with it in-house instead of reporting it to the relevant authority. Sadly, it seems that NAMA will get away with it. NAMA is the only State agency that has a policy of deleting the emails of staff members one year after such staff have left its employment. It does not sound as if the organisation is too interested in transparency.

Another serious development took place in February this year in relation to happenings in NAMA. A former NAMA staff member, Paul Pugh, was due to stand trial in the Dublin Circuit Court on 12 February for leaking highly sensitive information that NAMA was supposed to be keeping safe. For some strange reason, the DPP withdrew the case at the last minute. No explanation has been given as to why the proceedings have been halted and there is serious anger in certain quarters that this could have happened. If someone in the DPP's office saw fit in 2016 to recommend the prosecution of this NAMA official and to send him forward for trial, why was the prosecution halted and on whose instructions? If the Taoiseach does not have the answer at this stage, he should provide it to the House as soon as possible. There are a lot more questions than answers around how these individuals are operating.

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