Dan Boyle (Green Party)

The present, almost post-terrorist, situation justifies the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform pointing out the willingness of 150 or so people on this island to engage still in terrorist activities for nefarious political ends. To date they have proved incompetent in achieving their goals, but as we have seen from previous atrocities, they need be lucky only once. Money laundering in funding such terrorist activities needs to be heavily regulated and legislated against.

There is also the more prevalent post-terrorist situation wherein many former activists have decided to use their expertise to involve themselves in criminal activities. Traditional terrorist activities are being practised by a small number of people as well as some now involved in the criminal trade who previously had been terrorists. I hope this legislation closes as many loopholes as possible.

Ultimately the law can only go so far in terms of regulating accounts in financial institutions. The additional powers for seeking information and asking the necessary questions when large sums of money pass through individual accounts are important for both the Garda and the courts and should help identify the type of actions that can be defined as money laundering. The wider area of money laundering now needs to be addressed, however, concerning which we need information on how the proceeds of crime are being invested into seemingly legitimate business practices, such as the purchase of property and investment in shopfront businesses. While the proposed legislation goes some way down that road, it is an area that needs to be addressed further. The Criminal Assets Bureau identifies much of that activity and helps to use the proceeds it garners more proactively.

The co-operation and involvement of the financial institutions is very important in the proposed legislation should it be enacted. Whatever about the difficulties of the financial institutions, with which we are dealing every day, the previous legislation has been implemented very diligently and fairly by the institutions in question and it is important to put that on the record. The introduction of new legislation amounts to further impositions but society benefits and ultimately the financial institutions benefit too by not being exposed unduly to these moneys, which has, sadly, been the case too often in the past.

I welcome the legislation, as have most of the contributions made in the debate. I look forward to whatever tweaking is intended on Committee Stage and I believe the Oireachtas needs to be involved in an ongoing debate on how this legislation may be updated and strengthened continually.