Ciarán Cannon (Progressive Democrats)

-----wayward company directors. We are trying to strike a balance here between giving the director the powers he requires to do his job properly and ensuring we do not unnecessarily obstruct the entrepreneurial effort of thousands of Irish business people and that is exactly how the second part of that balance is being struck with this amendment.

The proposed extended power of seizure at section 2(a) affords the director or his staff a very broad power to seize documents. The suggested power would allow an officer to form a view that a filing cabinet, for example, might contain material covered by the warrant and he would be empowered by this legislation to take that whole filing cabinet away to his office and to read every single item in it at his leisure and come to a decision at some point as to whether the material was incriminating in any way.

Apart entirely from the acceptability of seizing such uncertain documents, it seems the object of this subsection is to facilitate a fairly leisurely review. Any execution of a warrant should be resourced, comprehensive and exact. The officer should be able to come to a view on the spot, even if the execution of the warrant takes some days, but the notion of the director or his or her staff "taking homework home with them" is suggestive of procrastination and even idleness. The only limitation on the power conferred under section 2A obliges the officer to carry out the determination or separation of documents as soon as is reasonably practicable. Given what we know to be the extremely sluggish approach of law enforcement or regulatory authorities in Ireland and the amount of documentation that might lawfully be seized under this extended power of seizure, the effect of this section would be possibly to paralyse completely the company in respect of which the material was seized.

The Director of Corporate Enforcement and his or her staff, I argue, have little or no experience of running a company or business. Every company in this particularly difficult environment needs to have the flexibility to adapt its market forces and be able to move very quickly. To have a considerable proportion of a company's documentation taken away on the pretence that perhaps one or two pages might be incriminating we believe to be somewhat too punitive. We ask that this whole section be re-examined for the Bill to be more efficient, while allowing that the director needs adequate powers of seizure. However, it needs to be less cumbersome, with fewer opportunities for the long deliberations that are commonplace in these types of investigations. I look forward to the Minister's response.