Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O’Dowd, to the House, and I welcome the Criminal Justice Bill 2013, which has received good support from both sides of the House. We had a good debate, as Senator O’Donovan will recall, on the 2010 Act which this Bill amends. As the Minister stated, the bulk of this Bill - all of Part 2 - deals with amendments to be made to the 2010 Act to improve its operation.

I recently had the pleasure of chairing an Irish Centre for European Law conference at the Royal Irish Academy on the enforcement of criminal law for transnational crimes across national boundaries across the EU. It looked at issues concerning forfeiture and seizure of criminal assets. It was interesting to hear from people on the front line of law enforcement against organised crime and the challenges with which they deal. It is useful to hear that the amendments proposed in this Bill have been devised by the financial action task force on money laundering and are mostly technical to improve its operation.

Section 9 provides for a change to the definition of “politically exposed persons” to include somebody who has become politically exposed. It seems sensible that a person may have developed a relationship with a bank before they became what the 2010 Act defines as a politically exposed person. That is the sort of amendment we can all support.

Part 3 is a more substantial change to the law and others have spoken of the need for this change. Recent developments and tragedies such as the Boston bombing make us mindful of the need to provide these powers, although they are extremely extensive and we would all hope they will never have to be used. We all appreciate these are powers that reside in the Minister and the application for the direction set out can only be made by an assistant commissioner or a Garda officer above that rank.

I think very clear safeguards are being put in place.

I would be grateful if the Minister of State would bring a couple of points regarding this Bill to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Shatter. First, I think the Minister should be mindful of the extensive nature of the powers being provided for. We should be conscious that under section 19 of the Bill, the geographical area to be covered could be the whole country - the whole jurisdiction of Ireland. That seems extremely extensive. Could the mobile phone network be shut down for six hours across the whole of Ireland? That gives us some sense of the extensive nature of the power being provided for.

The Minister of State referred in his speech to section 25, which contains provisions relating to emergency numbers. There is a worry that there is no mandatory requirement for emergency numbers to be accessible when networks are otherwise shut down. I know the Minister of State said he is hopeful that the providers will co-operate. Clearly, there may be technical difficulties with the availability of those numbers.

I would like to make a technical point about the giving of a direction to an undertaking under sections 24 and 25. An "undertaking" is defined in section 19 of the Bill as "a person who is .... authorised or licensed .... to provide a mobile communications service". Clearly, the offences set out in section 29 relate to a person rather than an undertaking. However, the technical rules set out in section 24 for the giving of a direction apply to an undertaking. It strikes me that because of the huge sensitivity in this regard, and the clearly set-out need for confidentiality, it might be useful to require a designated person within an undertaking to be the person with whom the Minister or delegated person makes contact. Perhaps it would be appropriate for the Minister to make regulations to that effect. Given that we are setting up clear lines of criminal liability, it seems important that there should be some clear line of communication between the ministerial officer who physically gives the direction and the person or officer in the undertaking who has the authority to receive it and act upon it.

I will conclude by wondering whether the delegation of ministerial powers provided for in section 28 of the Bill is appropriate in light of the extensive nature of the powers. I have raised some minor points. I welcome the Bill overall, as I think we all do.