Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Tánaiste to the House. I commend my colleague, Senator Daly, on all the work he has done to date on the Bill. As Senator Daly has outlined, the Law Reform Commission report on corporate killing in October 2005 recognised that current legislation was deficient and recommended that the new offence of corporate manslaughter be created. The commission opinion was that existing liability mechanisms in tort and health and safety legislation were insufficient to articulate the abhorrence of society with regard to manslaughter. It recommended a number of sentencing options. Furthermore, the Law Reform Commission identified a number of organisational failures in Ireland that resulted in death. Senator Daly has outlined a number of these, including the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board failure to recall contaminated blood products, the Stardust nightclub disaster, the Whiddy Island disaster and the rail crash in Buttevant. These cases were used to show how grossly negligent management resulted in death and how these tragedies could have been prevented.

In 2010, the then Minister for Justice and Law Reform, Dermot Ahern, received Government approval for the preparation of a Bill to make corporate bodies criminally liable for deaths they cause. However, despite Government approval, the Department of Justice and Equality, under the then Minister, Mr. Shatter, and subsequently under the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, has yet to publish legislation to deal with this important matter. That is why we have brought the Bill before the House today.

The Bill follows numerous attempts by Fianna Fáil to have corporate manslaughter recognised as an offence, most recently in a Bill published in 2011. The Bill provides that where an undertaking causes the death of a person by gross negligence, that undertaking is guilty of an offence called corporate manslaughter. The Bill is of the utmost importance when health and safety statistics are taken into account. Health and Safety Authority statistics show that between 1998 and 2004, 88 corporate entities were convicted of health and safety offences where deaths occurred. This illustrates that corporate bodies are often responsible for fatalities. Another survey of deaths in the construction industry from 1991 to 2001 found that 22% of building site fatalities were primarily attributable to the injured parties, 28% were caused by problems with management of the construction company and a staggering 47% were caused by management difficulties.

Under this Bill there is provision for criminal sanction for an undertaking that causes death by gross negligence where it owes a duty of care to the deceased person. The sanction would apply if it has breached that duty of care in that it has failed to meet the standard of care or the breach of duty involves a serious risk of death or personal harm or the breach causes the death of a person. In such cases, the court would have a number of means to penalise those convicted of corporate manslaughter, as outlined by Senator Daly. Under the provisions, courts would be in a position to impose a remedial order on the convicted undertaking, alongside a fine, to remedy the circumstances that led to corporate manslaughter.This Bill would also allow for a disqualification of a high managerial agent from acting in a management capacity in specified areas if that managerial agent has been convicted of grossly negligent management causing death. This may motivate the managerial agent to not be grossly negligent in the first place. This is a progressive Bill, which is long overdue. I welcome it and call on all Members present to support it.