Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy raised this a number of weeks ago. There are laws in place and there is a regulator. The regulator is the Central Bank. There is a tendency in the House to keep asking if we can investigate this and investigate that, but the established regulators have a function and an obligation to investigate if they receive complaints. I am not clear whether the individuals who have been defrauded, as the Deputy asserted, have made formal complaints in respect of the adviser to whom the Deputy refers or the companies in which that adviser was involved in establishing. Have actual complaints been sent to the Central Bank in respect of that? It is important to establish that, particularly as there are Central Bank registers. It is extremely important that customers are aware of the risk of fraud and related scams and that they ensure that the person or entity they are dealing with is registered with the Central Bank of Ireland. Those registers are available free online. The Central Bank also publishes warnings about unauthorised firms and will sometimes list such firms.

I presume this person was a registered broker. I will ask if the Deputy can meet with the Minister for Finance in relation to this, to take him through the details. The Minister has, from policy perspective, some interaction with the Central Bank, which is independent in terms of the conduct of its work. If a business has shut down - and the Deputy has suggested that a business closed down and then another business was established by the same person - any new business would also require authorisation by the Central Bank before it can undertake activities which are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. That authorisation process requires and includes a Central Bank fitness and probity review in respect of all of the key roles to lead the business and so forth.

There are individual accountability frameworks within regulation. The Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Act 2023 sets out clearly and fully where responsibility lies in regulated firms and includes conduct standards. If the Central Bank suspects, on reasonable grounds, that a subject has committed a prescribed contravention, it is in a position to hold an inquiry to determine whether the subject has committed such a contravention. There are strong sanctions in relation to individuals.

It would be useful to know more. The Deputy sent me some documents in the past hour but I have not had a chance to go through them. I will read that material. I am not clear why the Central Bank has not engaged.

I do not know if the Deputy has written to the Central Bank to make submissions to it on the people he has spoken about here.

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