Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will be supporting the Bill and I congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward. I am struck that since the onset of the financial crisis and the passage of two major corruption tribunal reports, particularly those of Mahon and Moriarty, white-collar crime prosecutions are sorely lacking in this country while the number of offences that have been created and legislation that has been passed is quite remarkable and numerous. There is a disconnect between the Minister's desire and that of his predecessor to place more emphasis on combating corruption and white-collar crime and investigators' capacity to identify these crimes when they occur and to ensure they are correctly prosecuted.

With all of these new corruption offences, what State bodies will be principally charged with investigating alleged offences committed under the Act? Will the new offences under the Act be subject to mandatory reporting obligations similar to those offences specified in the Schedule to the Criminal Justice Act 2011? There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the importance of adequately resourcing the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement to ensure its ongoing investigations into INM are not impeded. It was only a few months prior that those same persons were calling to disband the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement after revelations that one of the investigators had shredded evidence in the course of the Seán FitzPatrick trial. It should be a mandatory requirement that with the introduction of every new criminal offence the offences are matched with not only adequate but appropriate new resources.

While being placed 19th out of 183 states in the most recent corruption index is not bad, we are still considered more corrupt than developed European countries such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK. In each of these states white-collar crime investigation and prosecution is more adequately and appropriately resourced and that is where Ireland continues to be sorely lacking. It is no use having all these laws if the bodies charged with investigating the crimes do not have the skills or the manpower to do what is required. Lessons have been learnt from trials such as the Seán FitzPatrick trial where prosecutions were unsuccessful and other high-profile cases such as when the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission raided the offices of CRH only for the Supreme Court to say it had overreached its powers.

It seems to me that the only agency of the State that understands criminal investigations is the only agency that has been undertaking criminal investigations for the past century and that is An Garda Síochána. Why is there no dedicated stand-alone division in An Garda Síochána which alone is charged with investigating all white-collar crimes, executing all search warrants and collating all documentary evidence? The piecemeal approach we have in Ireland with different State agencies having different investigatory powers is not working and is leading to hapless prosecutions. As we debate the passage of this Bill through this House, will the Minister consider how these offences will be resourced? As we continue to develop a lengthy book of statutory white-collar criminal offences, perhaps the Minister will explain how we can improve our investigation and prosecution of these crimes.

I have spoken in recent days in the House on the Carltona doctrine and how it finishes up masking the wrongdoers in public life. Unfortunately, Ministers take the fall for decisions that are made which they may not have been aware of at the time the decisions were made. We have seen that recently in the cervical cancer scare. We saw it in both the PTSB and Brigid McCole cases. All of these cases were taken and the State defence commenced without the Minister being advised of what was going on until it was up and running. The Minister cannot be in every Department and every part of every Department all the time.

The legislation is good. The Minister has done a good job. It is a bit late in coming but it takes a long time to work these things through the system. The Minister is to be congratulated on it. It is my view that what we need to do now is ensure we resource the offices correctly and give them the powers they need to be able to detect white-collar crime and ensure that prosecutions are successful. We do not want to see unsuccessful prosecutions. I know from speaking to the Minister casually that it is not something he would want either. I know he is desperately anxious to get this through. It is my hope we will facilitate the speedy passage of the Bill through the House and that it will be enacted by June as the Minister requested. I thank the Minister for coming to the House.