Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 93: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his views on the recommendations contained in the Law Reform Commission report on corporate manslaughter published in October 2005. [18339/06]

Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)
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Question 104: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will introduce legislation to provide for the offence of corporate manslaughter as proposed by the Law Reform Commission in its report of October 2005. [18337/06]

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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Question 136: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if, in view of the 20 per cent increase in workplace fatalities in 2005, he intends to implement the recommendations made by the law Reform Commission in 2005 for a new statutory offence of corporate manslaughter. [18474/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 93, 104 and 136 together.

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. This has also been implemented under Section 80 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 2005 which 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 than safety, health and welfare at work relating to the overall criminal justice system which needed to be considered; and that therefore it was not appropriate to comprehensively deal with the whole 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 Attorney General's Office 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.