Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It is worth teasing out the matter. I refer to the recent Northern Bank money laundering case. It took a team of 26 gardaí several months to examine one series of documents on computer and on file. They had to go through every document and that was outlined in the court.

One side of the argument is related to the length of time it takes to go through computerised information because one must check what is on the hard disk and so forth. On the other hand, if someone needed to search a drawer in a filing cabinet and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement was examining the matter one week, one month or one year later then one would recognise that such a situation is hardly practicable. The legislation must cover such extreme instances. The only way to do this is a form of words which requires judgment and the only judgment that covers the two areas is the phrase "reasonably practicable". In my time here I have been unable to come up with any other phrase.

Let us consider the upside and down side. The down side is that one person's "reasonably practicable" is another's utter dismay. Therefore, one must find someone to mediate and to make a call on it. Unless the Minister establishes some in between, mediation, arbitration or determination process, the normal way of dealing with an interpretation of the law is to go to the courts. That would take the form of either a judicial review or mandamus injunction to establish if one is being reasonably practicable. The arguments put by Senators Cannon, Butler and others are spot on and no one could argue with them. However, one must cover both ends of the spectrum.

Let us remember the scene outside the bank on St. Stephen's Green two months ago. The Garda carted out truckloads of material. I do not know how long would be considered reasonably practicable to deal with all that documentation and associated material on computers. However, let us park that for one moment. Let us suppose there is a court case in which the whole world is watching to see what we are doing about the people who wrecked the country and so on - we know the speeches. How would Joe Duffy deal with the matter on "Liveline" if it turned out we passed legislation which required the Director of Corporate Enforcement to fill up the trucks again and cart everything back to St. Stephen's Green two weeks later, despite the fact he did not trawl through all the material? We would all appear pretty stupid. These are the two extremes and there is no answer to the matter because the arguments put by my colleagues are absolutely clear and true. This is an old story and if people do not work within the spirit of the act then one must go to court. That applies either to the person who owns documents or the person who seizes documents, namely, the Director of Corporate Enforcement. There is no other way to deal with this unless one creates something such as a Labour Court style body for high finance.