Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Bill is in many ways a step in the right direction and banks and financial institutions need to be held accountable for protecting their customers and for being scammed and facilitating illegal activity. As previously stated, this Bill is intended to transpose this fifth EU anti-money laundering directive into Irish law. The directive represents improvement in exposing the secretive ownership structures often used for tax evasion and other illegal activities.

Notwithstanding the progress made, the proposal was weakened before it was agreed at EU level. When offshore structures are protected, so too are other criminal activities. Despite that, the original directive had its teeth removed. The most important area in which the original directive was watered down relates to the issue of beneficial owners, which basically means the real owners of companies. The idea was to stop cases where an offshore company could have a nominee director. Such an individual could be hired in name and down as the owner for thousands of companies. The Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers and other leaks have repeatedly shown that shelf companies with complex ownership structures allow for tax evasion around the world on an industrial scale. We desperately need laws to address these secretive structures that allow company owners to be completely hidden. It is one of the biggest challenges we face in making the wealthiest in society pay their fair share. Yet, when this directive came back from the negotiations between the European Commission and the European Council, public access to the information was weakened and the proportion someone could own of a company while remaining hidden was increased.

This Bill gives the public more transparency regarding who owns what company but people are right to ask why the information we are working with is still so limited. The threshold for beneficial ownership is far too high at 25%. Tax justice and transparency advocates argue that a single share should be enough to constitute beneficial ownership and I believe most ordinary people would agree. Senior managers will still be allowed to be listed as beneficial owners, maintaining another important loophole. We still will be obliged to prove legitimate interest to access details of beneficial ownership of trusts.

On 10 August 2020, the Bill was agreed by the Cabinet. The EU directive was agreed upon almost two years ago. Ireland, like all member states, was given until January this year to pass legislation on it and this legislation should have been brought forward in 2019. It was only after the European Court of Justice imposed a €2 million fine on Ireland for delays, however, that action was taken. First it was watered down and then it was delayed. Why was this not introduced in 2019? Why has it taken more than two years to bring forward this important legislation? We should be bringing in stronger laws than those agreed at EU level. We know the extent and the impact of the problem throughout this State but we have seen successive Governments resisting reform and blocking transparency into ownership structures and tax evasion. While I welcome this Bill, which will go some way towards addressing that, there is a lot more to be done. I urge the Government to put its citizens first and to do everything possible to stop the wealthiest hiding behind structures. We need more transparency; it is only through transparency that we can have accountability.

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