Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate. Simply put, we do not currently have an effective means of preventing, investigating and prosecuting corruption. There is no overarching or consolidated approach to combating corruption in the private sector or the public sector. A look at the State's anti-corruption website gives us a clear picture of the fragmented approach, with 16 bodies listed as responsible for tackling corruption. Our anti-corruption response is incredibly fragmented by international standards. A 2020 survey conducted by the French Anti-Corruption Agency in partnership with the Group of States Against Corruption, GRECO, the OECD, and the Network of Corruption Prevention Authorities, NCPA, found that 84 of 114 countries surveyed had a single-agency approach, one which the Social Democrats has been championing since it was founded.

It is difficult and rare to see successful prosecutions of corrupt practices in business life in Ireland. Even after costly and lengthy tribunals of inquiry, there have been few consequences for those against whom negative findings have been made. There is a strong public perception of a golden circle in Irish society, the members of which are accountable to no one and who regard themselves as untouchable. The EU Commission's 2017 Eurobarometer on corruption found that 68% of Irish people believe that corruption is widespread across society, with a particular lack of confidence in the banking and financial sector and An Garda Síochána.

The creation of an independent statutory agency to oversee white-collar crime without doubt is welcome. The ODCE has remained in the purview of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment for far too long and its effectiveness has been constrained as a result, with a lack of independence over its budget and the hiring of staff. Globally, anti-corruption agencies have only ever been effective where there is a significant and consistent political commitment to tackle anti-corruption and where those agencies are allowed to operate free from political influence and, by extension, free from the type of lobbying that Deputy O'Dea talked about in terms of watering down sanctions.

The effectiveness of the anti-corruption agency is heavily dependent on the support and institutional co-operation between other agencies that address the broader issues of corruption, integrity and ethics.

In this instance it is very clear this co-operation has been lacking between the ODCE and An Garda Síochána. The ODCE had to wait nearly a year to be allocated six detectives from An Garda Síochána and there were successive delays and a lack of communications from the Garda. Emails released under freedom of information to Ken Foxe of Right To Know show the frustration within the ODCE, with its director, Ian Drennan, stating the Garda clearly had no intention of transferring the officers in the foreseeable future. He contacted the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and was told the Tánaiste had been in touch with the Minister for Justice and that the first allocation of two detectives to the ODCE had taken place in April, to be followed by two more in June, with the final two arriving later in the year. In response, Mr. Drennan said the appointments were temporary and did not address the need for a permanent additional investigative staff. Mr. Drennan told the justice committee he wants a memorandum of understanding between the new corporate enforcement authority and the Garda Commissioner, Mr. Harris, over the allocation of Garda resources to that agency. I had a priority question with the Minister of State last week on this very topic and it is very clear from what he has told us that there will not be a memorandum of understanding but what is in place is a letter from each to the other. That is not good enough. It is better than what we had but it is not anywhere near good enough. It is a bare minimum to have that memorandum of understanding between the corporate enforcement authority and the Garda Commissioner prior to the agency getting up and running. The proposed corporate enforcement authority retains a reliance on secondment of gardaí at the discretion of the commissioner and we simply cannot assume this process will go smoothly. The delay in the provision of investigative staff to the ODCE in the past year is unacceptable and hampers its ability to conduct a vital public service. Protections must be put in place to prevent the same from occurring within the corporate enforcement authority. We cannot criticise an agency for not doing its job if it has not got the resources to do it.

Looking at the proposed make-up of the corporate enforcement authority, the level of independence is questionable. While the authority will be removed from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Minister will appoint three full-time members based on recommendations from the Public Appointments Service, PAS, choose which member will act as chairperson and can fire them at any point due to ill health, stated misbehaviour or where the removal of a member appears to the Minister to be necessary for the effective performance by the authority of its functions. The Minister also has the sole authority on picking acting members to fill vacancies as they arise. The appointment of the chairperson by the Minister in this particular instance is completely unacceptable. This is supposed to be an independent anti-corruption agency and must be free from political influence. The Minister - that could be any Minister in the future - potentially could be able to guide the authority in a certain ideological direction by hand-picking the chairperson. That is over-reach. The proposed number of full-time members for the corporate enforcement agency is also too low. The justice committee recommended the minimum number of members on the authority should be increased to two, with the maximum number being increased to five. If this Government aims to be serious about tackling corruption in the private sector it must be serious about it from the very beginning. We must build up this authority in the way we mean it to continue rather than creating a system we know will be under-resourced in a few short years.

Another example of this is not providing the corporate enforcement authority with investigative powers, something for which the ODCE has been calling for some time now. I cannot understand why it would not be awarded those powers. The current system of leaving expert civilian staff outside the room while gardaí conduct interviews is completely ineffective. This must be all one piece. I am trying to imagine a scenario where you have temporary secondments of people who have the knowledge and they cannot be brought in. They are instead in and out trying to figure out just exactly how the interview should be conducted. When an individual is arrested there is, as we know, very limited time to conduct interviews. These interviews often contain a vast amount of intricate detail, particularly in this area, which requires expert knowledge. Valuable time is wasted by gardaí having to ferry information and questioning back and forth between the suspect and ODCE staff. As such, a big mistake is being made here on that. This is an absolutely essential power the CEA needs to work effectively, a power which has been called for by the ODCE and Transparency International Ireland. We have an historical tendency to be reluctant to grant State agencies further powers after they have been established. The Minister of State might outline what exactly his plans are on the provision of this power and why it is not intended to include it in this Bill.

According to global studies by Transparency International, budget allocations and independence over budget decisions have been proven to be a good indicator of a Government's willingness to tackle corruption. In the past few years there has been an increased move towards multi-annual funding as a budget method, allowing organisations to plan ahead, secure in the knowledge they will have sufficient funds in the next budget round. It is also essential for this agency to reduce the political involvement by reducing the Minister's ability to cut funding. I am not talking just about the current Minister or Government. This is a piece of legislation that will have a lifespan, so it is really important that is done. Multi-annual funding would provide the security and confidence needed to tackle big corruption cases within the private sector.

International research has shown it is large-scale public corruption cases which impact most strongly on the public's confidence. They are very visible and they send out a message so it is really important there is the confidence to take them on. In other jurisdictions the inability to prosecute some corrupt individuals with political and financial clout has led to declining public confidence and a lack of trust that anti-corruption agencies can perform their role diligently and objectively without fear or prejudice. The corporate enforcement authority must be ready and able to take on the most high-profile cases of anti-corruption in this country. The ODCE has experienced an increase in funding in the past few years, with €6.1 million allocated last year. However, the agency is currently underspending its budget allocation by €1.8 million. This underspend was largely due to vacancies, delays in recruitment and a failure to complete procurement processes by the year end, all of which speak to a critical lack of human resources within the office which cannot be solved by money alone. To properly measure the effectiveness of the corporate enforcement authority we must have the data to do so. The Director of Public Prosecutions and An Garda Síochána should publish disaggregated data under a new category which allows for analysis of enforcement of corruption-related offences. Prosecutions are currently categorised under fraud offences.

The formation of the corporate enforcement authority, though I would argue it is imperfect, is a welcome step forward to address white-collar crime but corruption in the public sector must be also tackled. Comprehensive and intelligence-led policing is essential if warning signs and suspicious activities are to be identified. That really protects the public service, just as a good corporate enforcement authority protects the private sector and gives confidence to the people of integrity we want to be working in both the private and public sector. The sharing of data among many existing agencies is unlikely to be enough to expose the complex and politically-sensitive cases.

5 o’clock

It was stated earlier that this whole world is well resourced and that people are well connected. I had an experience where somebody came in here and asked to interview me. As it happened, I understand that he wore a camera. When the matter was followed up on later by a journalist, Peter Murtagh of The Irish Times, who wrote an extensive article, having been to London. Mr. Murtagh discovered that there were many agencies or companies located near MI5. This was a whole world that I did not know existed. These were companies that involved themselves in the world of business. From reading the articles to which I refer, I discovered just exactly what we are up against. When one starts looking at the tiny amounts of money available here, at how gardaí have to be seconded in - you might get them and you might not - and the fact that one might not or might not have multi-annual budgeting, it all shows that we are creating a David-and-Goliath scenario when we do not have to.

An independent anti-corruption agency with jurisdiction over the public sector is also necessary. The Social Democrats have argued that one large agency with real power and resources would be more likely to be effective. We should start to look at matters like reputational damage. This was something we were always told about after the financial crash. We should look at this matter from the point of view of reputational damage. However, we should also look at it from the point of view of inculcating good practices. Having an effective agency to facilitate that would build public confidence. There are things in this in this agency, as it has been set up, that are deficient. There needs to be a re-examination in the context of embedding the law enforcement element into it and a reconsideration of the resourcing and budgeting involved. We must examine the possibility of having a bigger agency, as opposed to having many fragmented agencies that do bits and pieces, rather than the totality of the work that is required.

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