Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 17: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if it is his intention to urgently introduce legislation to provide for the creation of a new offence of corporate manslaughter, as suggested by the Law Reform Commission in October 2003 and recommended by the commission in its recent report to which a draft Bill is appended; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11266/06]

Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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The Law Reform Commission, in its report published in October 2005, recommended that as the current law of corporate liability for manslaughter does not provide a clear basis for constructing liability, a new basis, in legislative form, is necessary. To this end the commission included the draft of a short Bill in its report. The commission also recommended that there should be individual statutory liability for managers who were culpable in the causation of death. Section 80 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 provides for directors, managers or other similar officers of an undertaking to be held liable by the courts for an offence that is attributable to connivance or neglect on their part.

While this is a considerable step forward in implementing the recommendations of the commission, the Attorney General's office was of the opinion at the time of the drafting of the Bill, which is now the 2005 Act, that there were much broader issues relating to the overall criminal justice system which needed to be considered and that, therefore, it was not appropriate to comprehensively deal with the issue of corporate manslaughter in a Bill which was providing for the law and regulation of occupational safety, health and welfare. It should be noted for the record that the commission accepted the Office of the Attorney General's view that the scope of the 2005 Act was narrower than the proposed offence recommended by it in its report.

Further consideration of the recommendations in the report of the Law Reform Commission will now take place primarily at Government level by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in the context of his main responsibilities for the criminal law system.