Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister of State's response and thank him for it. He was not critical of the drafting of amendment No. 3 for which I thank him and thank Mr. Finbarr O'Malley who carried out the drafting with me of that amendment.

I would say with respect that there are contradictions in the Minister of State's response. First, he said the other authorised body or person, such as the Health and Safety Authority or the Director of Corporate Enforcement, are effectively only bringing investigating and prosecuting offences that are regulatory in nature while later correctly saying that in Ireland we do not have a formal distinction between criminal offences generally and administrative or regulatory offences. There is no such formal distinction. There is a long, if not proud, history in Ireland of bringing prosecutions for so-called regulatory offences, such as breaches of health and safety Acts, for offences which might be prosecuted as corporate manslaughter in other jurisdictions. I am thinking of cases such as Zoe Developments where we saw a very large fine imposed on a construction company in respect of breaches of health and safety legislation as a result of which it appeared that an employee had been killed. There is a contradiction there. If our amendment would bring other bodies charged with prosecuting offences into the ambit of the Bill, that was our intention. There is no formal distinction between bodies between the kinds of offences they prosecute and those prosecuted by the DPP. There is no formal categorical distinction of that kind.

The Minister of State also made the point that for many of those so-called regulatory or administrative offences, there is no direct victim. That is true. I accept there may not be a victim in the way that there is a victim of a burglary or assault but if that is the case there should be no worry or concern about bringing those bodies within the ambit of the legislation. If there is no identifiable victim in respect of a large group of the offences which are prosecuted by those authorised persons then the Act will not be effective in that way so there should be no concern about that.

Our definition seeks to provide to bring within the ambit of the Act other bodies that may have a statutory function of bringing prosecutions of offences and that where there are offences and where there is a victim identifiable, then whether we call those offences regulatory or criminal those victims should be entitled to the protection of the Act. That is envisaged by the directive, that it would be broader than simply offences prosecutable through the normal mechanism of criminal offences through the Garda Síochána or the DPP.