Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As this is a new amendment, it is important to lay out what we are doing here. In essence, these amendments will provide a mechanism for Ireland's co-operation with the European Public Prosecutor's Office, EPPO, an independent EU body established in 2017 as an enhanced co-operation measure. It has responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crimes against the financial interests of the EU and participating member states. It commenced its operations in 2021.

The development of a supranational body with responsibility for both the investigation and prosecution of offences presented particular challenges in the context of Ireland's common law legal system, and Ireland initially decided not to opt in. This decision is under review and how we could opt in is being actively considered. In the interim, however, we have been clear that we fully support and wish to co-operate with EPPO. We have been working closely with participating member states and EPPO to see how this can be achieved.

Establishing a sound legal basis for co-operation is not straightforward. The relevant international co-operation instruments are established on the basis of state-to-state requests and were not created with a supranational body such as EPPO in mind. This issue was identified early in the development of EPPO and Ireland argued for the development of a separate EU legal instrument to facilitate co-operation. In fact, such a new instrument was foreseen by the EPPO regulation, which invites the Commission, if appropriate, to submit proposals in respect of it. To date, however, no such instrument has been progressed. In the absence of such an instrument, Ireland has sought to be pragmatic and has emphasised that it can respond to requests for co-operation if those requests are made through the participating member state authorities.However, to allow requests to be made directly by EPPO, legislative changes are required and these are the changes I am bringing forward today. Given the difficulties arising from using existing international agreements, the Office of the Attorney General has advised that the only sound approach to co-operation with EPPO is to unilaterally provide for that assistance in domestic law.

Accordingly, the approach taken is to amend the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Act 2008 with a new Part 7B to be inserted into that Act. This makes general provision for co-operation with EPPO and specifies section by section the modifications that apply when dealing with EPPO requests. Requests from EPPO will generally be dealt with in a similar way to requests by EU member states. When it is necessary to determine any question by reference to the law of the requesting state, this will be done by reference to the law of the member state where EPPO is conducting the investigation. There are particular cases where specific provision must be made, for example, around the documentation to be provided for external freezing orders or for assurances to be given with regard to the law of the relevant EPPO member state. A regulation-making power is provided to enable specific details to be addressed with regard to particular types of requests.

In general, Ireland will rely on EPPO acting within its competencies. Ireland will not look behind a request to determine, for example, whether it is EPPO or the member state authorities in question that should be investigating the offence in question. The EPPO regulation provides that such matters will be dealt with by the authorities of the other member states or in the Court of Justice of the EU as it may be. While the amendments are complex and a significant amount of work has gone into this, for which I thank my officials, this reflects the application of the approach I have outlined to the many different types of requests that may arise.