Results 33,381-33,400 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The premise of the Deputy's question is correct. Although I cannot prove it, I suspect that breaches of company, competition and tax law are considerable and much greater in number than we realised. Obviously, there are various bodies that pursue the perpetrators. The Revenue Commissioners are very well resourced and do a really great job. There are also the CCPC and the ODCE, which is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: That is a good question. We would probably leave it to the Garda. Ms Brennan or Ms O'Brien may wish to address that as they were involved in the talks with other Departments.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The way I see it is all fraud is wrong, be it tax fraud, company fraud or welfare fraud. Some people make a distinction between them based on perceptions around the social class of the offender but my view is that anyone who is committing fraud is stealing from the public and stealing from society so in whatever brief I hold, I intend to take a hard line on these issues. I did so at the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I do not want to talk about individual cases because I do not get involved in them for obvious reasons. It is best that I do not. The Department of Social Protection estimates that it saves approximately €500 million a year in fraud and control measures. If it did not do what it is doing, that is the kind of money we would be losing every year. I am not privy to the report Senator...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I normally have them. I think it is in the file that the ODCE took four cases and won four prosecutions. That is often forgotten.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I think Senator Gavan is leaving out how well resourced the Revenue Commissioners are. They pursue tax fraud and they are probably better resourced than the Department of Social Protection in pursuing social welfare fraud. This agency is only for one specific area relating to the Companies Act the Senator mentioned. The idea that came from the Law Reform Commission was to have an FBI-type...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: To answer the first question, yes, I believe the laws and offences are robust in this area. As the Deputy knows, the Company Law Review Group, CLRG, does a lot of work with us on updating the law all of the time, and we are going to keep doing that. The issue around the experts in the room has come up a few times and came up in my discussions with the director as well, so we are going to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I thank Deputy Stanton for his questions. When it comes to having access to that new electronic information - although it is not that new anymore - which may be on servers, in the cloud or held electronically elsewhere, we will try to deal with it in the police powers Bill. Therefore, that will be done across the board, not just for company law offences but for the Revenue Commissioners,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: Can Ms Brennan take that question?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: At the moment the ODCE is an office of my Department. It is very much part of the Civil Service and the Civil Service structure. We believe that becoming an independent agency in its own right will make it easier for the office to hire staff more quickly and hire and retain particular expertise. Generally, this has been the model. A specialist agency is more equipped to do this, whether...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: Just to give an idea of budgets, the budget for this year is just over €6 million and that will increase to €6.3 million next year. In terms of what we have planned for staffing levels, the current complement for the ODCE is just under 47 staff. We would plan to increase that and scale it up to 69 so quite a big increase. On the civilian side, that is going from 39.8 staff...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I agree with the Deputy's observations in the round. It is worth putting on record that when it comes to the ODCE's role in investigations relating to the Anglo Irish Bank debacle or saga, five separate investigations resulted in four trials, all of which resulted in persons being convicted on indictment of criminal offences. While there is a strong focus on the Seán FitzPatrick case,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The Ministers of State, Deputies English and Troy, and I are developing a proposal for a scheme similar to the Covid restrictions support scheme, with a monthly payment that would go to businesses that are in the predicament that the Deputy refers to, with a premises and fixed costs that have to be met, but do not currently qualify for the Covid restrictions support scheme because they do not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: We will do a project on that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The increase of €360,000 probably is on the small side so I imagine when it comes to negotiating a budget for next year, should we get this legislation passed, I will look for more than that, since 22 extra staff will cost more than that. I will be looking for a larger increase than that next year, assuming we get the legislation through. I will provide an outline of the proposed...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: There are no plans to move of which I am aware. I might ask Ms Brennan to address that question. In the world of home working, new agencies' need for big, new offices is less than it used to be.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I have not seen or received the ODCE's request. Will Ms Brennan speak on this?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I am not sure exactly how that works,-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: -----but I do not believe that requires my approval.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Enforcement Authority) Bill 2018 (Resumed): Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (29 Jan 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The eight gardaí will be working on cases, as will the digital forensics assistant principal officer, the enforcement lawyer and the ICT manager. These numbers comprise five clerical officers, two executive officers, one higher executive officer, three assistant principal officers and two principal officers. I do not believe there is a straightforward division between people who are...