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

This motion forms part of the European Commission's new suite of proposals to reform anti-money laundering efforts at EU level. It will extend across to our national centralised bank account register, allowing it to be accessed through a single access point developed and operated by the European Commission. All designated authorities across the EU which are responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of criminal offences will be able to access this registry. Access to the registry will allow investigators to trace, freeze and confiscate criminal assets quickly before the proceeds can disappear. Currently, registering this kind of information can take up to 30 days through bilateral agreements, losing the element of speed which is so vital.

That is the positive side of things. Unfortunately, despite these national registers being required under the fourth money laundering directive, which was published in 2015 by the EU and adopted by Ireland in 2018, we do not have one. Ireland is still in the process of complying with the fourth directive and has only recently implemented the fifth, while the rest of the EU has already moved on to the sixth. In July of this year, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice stated that the Central Bank is currently working on a centralised bank account register. We are leagues behind when it comes to anti-money laundering and financial regulation. We are adopting these directives years after everyone else in the bloc, and constantly playing catch-up. I do not think there has been legislation recently in the justice area. We are not saying the same thing and we are playing catch-up with regard to compliance. Why are we so unresponsive? Why are we not out there, being compliant? We keep talking about being good Europeans but, when it comes to compliance, we very often have to be threatened.

The European Union has made anti-money laundering and terrorist financing a long-standing priority but efforts to tackle the area have met with limited success, which is largely down to inconsistent regulatory environments between member states, and we are certainly a culprit in that regard. The European Commission summarises the consequences as follows: criminals and terrorists have a sustained means to jeopardise public security and the incidence of money laundering damages the reputation of jurisdictions, resulting in the withdrawal of financial services, which in turn has a negative impact on investment and damages the EU Internal Market.

The amount of money generated through criminal activities is, of course, hard to measure, given fraud is by its nature hidden until it is discovered. Europol has estimated that 1% of the EU's annual GDP is associated with suspicious financial activities. In 2020, this would represent a whopping €139 billion, and we can imagine the many things that money could be directed towards. Annual financial flows due to money laundering are estimated at trillions of euro worldwide. This highlights the ineffectiveness of the EU efforts so far and the need to close regulatory loopholes across the bloc. A lack of co-ordination allows money launderers and terrorist financiers to launder money and move assets through the financial system with relative ease.

It is important also to say that, on the other side, limited enough information should be provided, for example, the name and IBAN. While it is important that everybody's details would be given, these should be limited details. We also need to be apprised of what level of safety and security is involved, or whether a risk assessment is done in regard to the provision of even that information because, although that information on its own is not going to be problematic, when it is matched with other information, it could be. There is a need to make sure we are properly considering that aspect.

To pick up on a point made by Deputy Durkan in regard to banks, on the list of institutions that are trusted, banks would not be one of mine, and I suspect that is a view that is shared here. Increasingly, they do not want the public. They do not want them coming through the door; they just want their money and they want everything to be automated. In my and Deputy Durkan’s constituency and in others across the country, we are seeing significant changes. One of the risk areas identified around the time of the crash was that the bank manager did not know the bank customers, so there is a very significant imbalance happening at the moment.

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