Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We cannot be soft on white-collar crime. White-collar criminals should not be allowed to operate under a shroud of acceptability. There is a direct connection between the visible crimes that we see daily and white-collar crimes. Proceeds from street muggings, car break-ins, burglaries and other daily occurrences in our streets filter their way up to white-collar criminals and just because these white-collar criminals do not have dirt under their fingernails does not mean their hands are clean.

Money laundering, cybercrime, counterfeiting and fraud are the tools used by these white-collar criminals. Mixing with the so-called upper echelons of society and displaying the trappings of their ill-gotten gains through fancy homes, fancy cars and golf club memberships give these white-collar criminals an air of respectability they do not deserve. They walk around in their flash suits, looking down their noses at people in tracksuits. With the click of a button on a laptop, this dirty money gets moved from one place to another and comes up clean on the other side. We need to put things in place to stop this from happening.

I note the Government's commitment on cybercrime in the report on the future of policing but commitments are not worth the paper they are written on unless they have political will behind them. Commitments need to be resourced and enforced. We cannot be soft on cybercrime. We have all seen recent headlines about serious organised crime in this country. Organised counterfeiting and fraud are only possible with the types of immense resources possessed by large criminal gangs.

Most things in life have a way of filtering down but dirty money also filters up. The money that the mother borrowed from the credit union to pay the drug debts of her child flows right up to the modern skyscrapers where, at the click of a button, it is sanitised. A recent report stated that a quarter of the people in Dublin's north-east inner city have experienced drug-related intimidation and over 80% see it as an issue but less than one in five would report it. Drug-related intimidation is not confined to one area of Dublin. I have met parents in my own area who have been forced to pay drug-related debts that their children have accumulated. The debts that the children apparently owe these unscrupulous dealers are frequently exaggerated to parents who end up paying exorbitant amounts back to these dealers for fear of reprisals. Is this not fraud at a very base level? This is the money that flows up to these white-collar criminals.

In response to a parliamentary question I asked about the amount of assets seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, I was pleasantly surprised that there has been an increase in the amount of money seized. In 2019, almost €65 million was seized by CAB. While I welcome the seizure by the State of this ill-gotten money, it is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on. That €65 million originated in areas such as my own. It originated in the purses of mothers paying drug debts for their children. The money originated in areas with high levels of deprivation and poverty caused by systemic failures in Government policies. The money currently goes back to the Exchequer but it should be ring-fenced to build resilience in the communities in which it originated. It should be ring-fenced for local drug task forces, mental health groups, family resource centres, unemployment services and other community groups that have been failed by successive Governments.

I suggest that the assets seized by CAB are just the tip of the iceberg.

Section 9 creates a criminal liability for corporate bodies where they or their staff may have been engaging in or benefiting from counterfeiting. If they can prove they took "all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence" to prevent such behaviour, that will be their defence. This potentially provides an out for large companies that might benefit from these activities. This cannot be allowed. I want to be clear that the interaction between cybercrime and white-collar crime should not be subject to a light touch in this country, and that we must look at this more closely on Committee Stage.

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