Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and commend Senator Mark Daly on introducing this Bill. Others have spoken about the long history and background to the introduction of an offence of corporate manslaughter. It is not a new idea, it has been around a long time.I am happy, on behalf of the Labour Party, to support the Bill. We introduced the first Labour Party Bill on corporate manslaughter in 2001. Quite a succession of Bills have been introduced by different parties over the years since then. It is unfortunate that we never moved to legislate finally on it. I hope this Bill will be the final catalyst. Others mentioned a very important Law Reform Commission report on corporate killing from October 2005. I know this Bill is very much based on the Law Reform Commission's draft Bill that was produced then.

It is worth commenting on the contrast in terms of the law in England where a reform to introduce an offence of corporate manslaughter was finally introduced, as others said, in the 2007 Act there. There is some interesting history around the UK Act, which is called Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. It created a new offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland called corporate manslaughter and in Scotland it is called corporate homicide. There were originally proposals to make it an offence of corporate killing. That term was seen as too emotive and it was dropped in favour of the term "corporate manslaughter". That legislation provided for an offence where an organisation has caused a person's death and also the way in which its activities are managed or organised that caused a person's death and the way in which the activities are managed or organised that amounted to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased. The test is somewhat different from that adopted by the Law Reform Commission in this Bill. It would be worth considering whether the test in this Bill is too onerous and whether the test in the English law is somewhat better.

There is other interesting history in the English Bill in that there have been quite a number of successful prosecutions for corporate killing before that under pre-exiting powers. There were a number of major disasters in the UK that changed public opinion and made the introduction of the legislation particularly urgent there. Others have mentioned some of these. There was the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in 1987 where 193 people had lost their lives when the MS Herald of Free Enterprise, a cross-channel ferry, capsized after leaving the port with it bow doors open. I have read over the years since some of the reports on that disaster and there was a famous report which referred to the company's operations as having been from the top to bottom infected with the disease of sloppiness. It was the first time where an offence of corporate manslaughter was sought to be prosecuted but the prosecution failed on the basis that nobody sufficiently high up in the company could be identified with the particular breach of duty and the particular gross negligence. This was always the pitfall of the old common law position on corporate killing. In Lord Denning's words, it had to be proven that the acting mind, the directing mind, of the company was liable rather than just the hands, the mere operatives who carried out the policy decisions of those at the top. It is a very archaic view, some would say now, of company organisation.

In Britain there were a number of disasters starting with the Zeebrugge ferry and then a number of rail crashes, which others have mentioned, one in Southall in 1997 which resulted in seven deaths and in Paddington in 1999 which resulted in 31 fatalities. These and other terrible accidents in which large numbers of people were killed led ultimately to the passage of the legislation there. Fortunately, we have not had anything like that in Ireland but, as a result, this issue has not been as politically urgent or has not been seen as politically urgent as it should been. The impetus here should lie in our occupational deaths, that is, deaths at work, and others referred to high numbers of deaths, in particular, in agricultural workplaces and in the construction industry.

When we look at how deaths have been dealt with in criminal law and in health and safety law in particular as a result of workplace accidents, generally prosecutions have been taken under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act. Colleagues will be familiar with the Zoe Developments' case in 1997 where a company was ultimately ordered to pay £100,000 to charity after the death of a building worker on one of the sites operated by that company. The site in question was also closed for a time which was seen as a much more severe sanction on the company because it lost a large sum of money as a result. Roseberry Construction was another case which colleagues may recall where two individual workmen were killed, again in a workplace accident. In that case, the company was fined €200,000 for breaches of health and safety legislation. There have certainly been prosecutions but they have not been of the order of corporate manslaughter or in the name of corporate manslaughter and clearly the fines, while they have been significant, have not been of the nature of fines we have seen in England.

Turning to the experience in the UK and looking at some of the cases there, to some of which colleagues referred, since the 2007 Act came into force, we have seen a number of very high-profile successful prosecutions for corporate manslaughter. The County Armagh case was referred to where a farming company was fined £187,000 in 2012. In 2011, the first prosecution was in the Cotswolds where a trench collapsed in Gloucestershire and the company was fined £375,000. A big fine of £480,000 was imposed in 2012 on Lion Steel, a manufacturing company, over the death of an employee of the company, Stephen Berry, who suffered fatal injuries. The fine provided for in UK law is unlimited. Fines are clearly the right sanction for a company. There has been a long debate over how one sanctions a company for corporate manslaughter and for corporate liability for criminal offences. That is the model that is followed here. It is a no-brainer that this legislation should be adopted, that we should all support it and that we should move forward with it, looking, if necessary, at amendments on Committee and Report Stages, but noting that it is overdue that we would move to have this sort of offence.

Another observation I would make in terms of changes to criminal law is that we have seen in recent years a much greater emphasis on enforcement of company law offences, specifically since the enactment of the Company Law Enforcement Act in 2001 and the establishment of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, ODCE. We have seen a much greater culture of corporate liability for criminal offences and specifically for breaches of company law provisions as well as the health and safety law breaches to which I have referred. It might be deduced and we might conclude from the movement towards greater liability being attached in criminal law to companies for breaches of or offences under company law compared with the lack of momentum on corporate manslaughter that greater priority was given to making companies liable in Ireland to protect financial interests than to protect human life or health, especially of employees of companies.

With those few remarks, I welcome the Bill and very much welcome the principle behind it.