John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

It gives me great pleasure to be the first to welcome the Tánaiste to the House. I wish him continued success as Tánaiste.

There is unanimity in this House on the purpose of and the need for this Bill, which I welcome. The purpose of the Bill covers a number of areas. First, it extends the competence of Europol to money laundering, regardless of the type of offence from which the laundered proceeds originate. Second, it clarifies certain powers relating to participation in joint investigation teams by members of Europol and the privileges and immunity applying to members of Europol. It also streamlines the internal workings of Europol, particularly as they relate to liaison procedures and the analysis and processing of data.

That is where the future lies. Criminals today work in an international environment, in which the ability to transfer funds from one bank account to another is instantaneous. The Europol (Amendment) Bill 2006 addresses that. We need to be able to follow the money trail because those who put money before life, limb and liberty have already made a conscious decision to make money their god. It would give me great pleasure if we could take that from them. As part of that goal we established the Criminal Assets Bureau to take assets and the proceeds of crime from convicted criminals, which I welcome.

Together with the freedoms we enjoy there are people who hate our lifestyle and oppose the liberty we enjoy by means of terrorism. Terrorists today may have access to different types of weapons than heretofore. I do not welcome the proliferation of countries with nuclear capability. It is a dangerous development and I hope it can be contained. The more countries that have nuclear weapons the greater the opportunities for terrorists. Having seen the way a weapon of mass destruction, in the shape of an airline carrying fuel, was used as a weapon to kill large numbers of people, I cannot exclude the possibility that it may happen again in the future, which we must address. The only way we can do that is by intelligence gathering and by giving Europol the means to counter the current capabilities of terrorists and criminals. Therefore I welcome the Bill and recommend it to the House.