Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has said that there is a range of bodies. It is worth saying that it is not only bodies such as the Health and Safety Authority but also the HSE, HIQA, ComReg and so on also have functions here. There are some cases where there will be direct victims, that they would be excluded from the ambit of the Act if an amendment such as this was not accepted. I would have been open to an amendment to my amendment, or a different kind of an amendment that named a group of authorities and put them in a schedule to the Bill, for example. According to what the Minister of State says, that would have been a preferable approach. What I do not hear from the Minister of State is a principled objection to expanding the remit of the legislation to cover other prosecuting bodies where there is a direct victim.

It seems to me there could be a way of crafting an amendment that deals with the issues he raises and that names specific bodies in a schedule. It is unfortunate that at a very late date our schedule was altered so that we are taking Committee and Report Stages together today. This seems to be the sort of situation where we could usefully have had a dialogue between Committee and Report Stage on how we might encapsulate the spirit behind my amendment and that of Senator Boyhan and place it in a format that is more narrow and meets the issues raised by the Minister of State and his officials.