Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a fundamental principle of any enforcement regime that sanctions must be effective and proportionate. The IAA has available to it graduated enforcement mechanisms to respond to the particular type of non-compliance it faces. Its enforcement mechanisms scale up from restriction of a licence, suspension of a licence and revocation of a licence to criminal sanctions, including summary prosecution and prosecution on indictment.It should be noted that the IAA has the ability to withhold part or all of a licence for failure to comply with regulatory requirements, and has done just that in the past. The withdrawal of particular parts of a licence in respect of instances of identified regulatory non-compliance relating to those parts of a licence is an effective and proportionate enforcement mechanism.

In general, administrative financial sanctions are more suited to economic regulatory roles than safety regulatory roles. In addition, administrative financial sanctions, as opposed to criminal sanctions, may not carry the associated reputational damage in the eyes of the public. In terms of speed of enforcement, a direct path to the courts is the most effective means of enforcement. An administrative fines system more often than not serves to delay enforcement because fines are issues and disputed, and then the fines themselves send up before the courts. As such, I cannot accept amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 10.