Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 159. Given these provisions amend the Central Bank Reform Act 2010, it is also necessary to update the citation of the Central Bank Acts and these amendments provide for this update. I might put some additional information on the record of the House in case there is any question about this. The first of these changes, as set out in amendments Nos. 1 and 180, will amend the Short and Long Titles of this Bill to provide for the inclusion of this package of measures and hence the new Title to the Bill, namely, the Credit Union and Co-operation with Overseas Regulators Bill. The net impact is the name of the Bill is being changed from being the Credit Union Bill to the Credit Union and Co-operation with Overseas Regulators Bill 2012, which I readily concede is a bit of a mouthful.

The Long Title is likewise amended to specify that the Central Bank will have revised powers in respect of co-operation with other regulators and will from henceforth have consolidated powers in respect of the appointment of authorised officers. The International Organization of Securities Commissions, usually referred to as IOSCO, co-ordinates security regulators across the globe. The great majority of IOSCO members already have acceded to the memorandum but amendments are required to enable the Central Bank of Ireland to sign it. In these amendments, the Government is simply allowing the Central Bank to sign this international amendment in order that the powers that can be given to it are clear for all to see.

The Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Bill 2011 proposes measures which meet all of these requirements and it was intended that the Central Bank of Ireland would be in a position to accede to the memorandum on the enactment of that Bill. However, IOSCO members have agreed that it would issue a watch-list of those countries which had not yet signed the memorandum on 1 January 2013. This change means that the enactment of the relevant legislation provisions now is a matter of some urgency.

As for what the amendments do, the new section 54 of the Central Bank Reform Act is a general provision enabling the Central Bank to exercise its various powers in support of third-country regulators. It is important to note that the proposed power enables the Central Bank to share information with other regulators. In making a decision to share information with other regulators, the Central Bank may take into account a number of factors, including whether the breach of law concerned also would be a breach of Irish law, as well as the seriousness of the issue and the public interest in general. It also should be noted that the Central Bank can expect a financial contribution to defray the cost of the investigation by the bank, if it agrees to a request to investigate a matter on behalf of another regulator, unless European Union-related obligations are concerned.

Amendment No. 164 provides for changes to section 33AK of the Central Bank Act 1942. It removes the obligation on the bank to report information pointing to the commission of an offence to other law enforcement authorities in the State where the information concerned is received from an overseas supervisor. The reason for this is to allow the free flow of information between regulators without fear that the information shared could cause criminal prosecutions to fail as a result of the variations in the methods used to gather information in different jurisdictions. The mandatory passing of information to those charged with prosecuting criminal offences in circumstances in which Irish rules of evidence might mean that any prosecution would be contaminated, clearly is not in the interest of justice for the individual or the integrity of the criminal justice system generally.

The larger part of amendment No. 165 proposes to repeal the existing authorised officer powers under 20 different Acts and statutory instruments and replace them with a single authorised officer regime which the Central Bank may use to obtain information from all regulated financial service providers. The current authorised officer regime varies across each sector, and important powers provided for in some circumstances are absent in others. A key provision will allow for an authorised officer appointed by the Central Bank to require any person who might reasonably have information relevant to the investigation of a financial service issue to provide the information. The substance of the amendments in group 2 is to provide for that and to tidy up the existing legislation by way of a number of consequential changes.