Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Without extending the debate unnecessarily, I should have said that there is at least a debate to be had about the definition of the original EU directive. I am grateful to Maria McDonald and the Victims' Rights Alliance for the information they have supplied us with on this. Their point is that "competent authority", the term used in article 4 of the victims' directive, is broader than a law enforcement authority. It envisages that authorities beyond the Garda or the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission would be covered. It is clearly up to each national jurisdiction to decide what a competent authority would be. It seems that, at the very least, some sort of consideration should have been given to what competent authorities might, in Ireland, have prosecuting functions that would affect individual victims beyond the mere regulatory offences of the sort that we talked about with the health and safety legislation, although there are many cases where we have seen direct victims even in what we might call technical offences.