Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will support the amendments. If a person receives a gift, a consideration or an advantage in return for an act of corruption, one of the penalties should be that that gift, consideration or advantage be seized. However, the way the legislation was drafted initially indicated that the gift could be seized if it had been offered or there had been an agreement to give it. In that situation, as the Minister said, the gift might not have been given. Therefore, if somebody was to offer to give somebody a sum of money and the money was not paid, it would be extremely difficult to seize the money from the individual since he or she had not received it. It makes much more sense to change the wording to "a gift, consideration or advantage which has been accepted or obtained". It introduces less ambiguity into the penalty section in section 17.

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