David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

The Labour Party was good at lecturing people before the election. If it can give it, then it should certainly be able to take it.

There is a perception that those from a wealthy background or in well-paid jobs are favoured in the criminal justice system. My generation grew up with the brown envelope brigade which saw corruption between developers, the banking system and politics. As Senator Hayden said, it was not a victimless crime. When I was growing up, politics was seen as a source of ridicule, particularly when the leader of the country told people to tighten their belts while being involved in a web of corruption. I remember hearing about meetings of Dublin City Council at which the gallery was packed with developers' lobbyists and not with interested members of the public. My generation now have over-priced properties built in the wrong places because of the corrupt relationship between planners, developers and politicians. No one has been held to account.

The same perception exists about white-collar crime and what happened in Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide. Corrupt decisions were made by senior individuals in these banks, yet they have not been held to account. Now having to bail out these banks due to these decisions, it is galling for the people asked to pay for the bailout, such as those on social welfare or low incomes, not to see one person involved spend a night in a prison cell.

The French philosopher, Michel Foucault, wrote in 1977:

Visit the places where people are judged, imprisoned or executed... One thing will strike you everywhere; everywhere you see two quite distinct classes of men, one of which always meets on the seats of accusers and judges, the other on the benches of the accused.

While the criminal justice system may accord with realities, it cannot accord with any reasonable conception of justice. It ought to be a basic principle of any justice system that criminals are treated equally, irrespective of class or background, and damaging crimes should be punished, regardless of by whom and in what context or employment. The introduction of legislation to deal with the growing plague of white-collar crime has long been called for by all political parties.

This is welcome.

The recent collapse of the global economy has started a conversation on a crime that has for too long been viewed as a victimless crime. We have seen, with Enron, the Irish banking system - particularly Anglo Irish Bank - and local authorities and bad planning decisions that these crimes were not victimless. We all know that many people are now facing and dealing with the consequences of the bad planning decisions made by people who were, essentially, making corrupt decisions. That is the bottom line and is what happened in this State. Very few of those people were properly held to account. I welcome the fact that at least some attempt is being made by the Government to deal with this. By its nature, white collar crime can be difficult to investigate and prove. We must be mindful and cognisant of this when dealing with this issue and must support the Minister and the Government to ensure that whatever provisions are put in place are robust, will work and can deal with the complex nature of this type of crime. The Bill proposes to introduce measures with the aim of assisting the Garda with investigation and prosecution.

I wish to deal with a number of proposals and recommendations being put forward by Sinn Féin. While we support the Bill, we want to be constructive and help make things better, not just in terms of the Bill but in shaping the debate. The first and most important necessity is the establishment of comprehensive and clear corporate liability for corruption offences. This is vital for the credibility of the State's measures against bribery, which have been criticised in international evaluations in the past. The OECD working group on bribery has recommended that Ireland codify and clarify the liability of legal persons for bribery offences. It submitted that the prosecution of legal as well as natural persons for corruption-related offences would serve as a powerful deterrent against corporate complicity in bribery and corruption. We need a firm commitment that there will be adequate resourcing for the Garda and the regulatory agencies in order to investigate and detect offences and further investment in the enforcement of laws and regulations preventing economic crime is imperative. I have been asked to conclude so will finish on that important point. It is absolutely necessary that following the passage of this Bill there will be enforcement. We can pass all the laws we want as Senator Bradford said earlier, but the important part is the ability to enforce those laws. There are questions to be asked as to whether the fraud squad has the resources to enable it to do what is necessary in the context of the implementation of this Bill in an adequate manner.

I thank the Minister for dealing with this issue so comprehensively; it is one of the most important issues that has faced the country because of what has happened. We cannot tolerate a two-tier judicial system where a certain class of people, simply because of the positions they hold, are not subject to the laws of the land or where crimes which are obvious to all of us - although perhaps not in terms of the legislation - can go unpunished. That has been the hallmark of what has happened in the banking system over the past number of years. The attitude has been that the person made a mistake, but it was not necessarily a crime. However, we know that corrupt and criminal practices were carried out in the banks where people made decisions from which they and their friends profited. That is what happened in the Irish banking system, yet we were not in a position to properly hold those people to account because of the dearth of legislation to ensure we could do so. That is wrong. I welcome the Minister's tentative steps towards dealing with this complex issue.