Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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1283. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of persons successful prosecuted under section 7 of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 in 2019, 2020 and 2021, in tabular form. [1911/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy may be aware, under the provisions of the Courts Service Act 1998, management of the courts is the responsibility of the Courts Service, which is independent in exercising its functions. This includes the compilation of information relating to convictions.

However, in order to assist the Deputy, I have sought information from the Courts Service. 

The following figures in relation to the number of offences and number of persons convicted under the relevant section of the Act in the District Court have been provided. I am advised that it is important to note that a person may be convicted on more than one offence.  

Table 1. Number of offences and number of persons convicted in the District Court

Table 2: No of offences and no of persons sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court

Finally, I wish to assure the Deputy that Ireland has a robust Anti-Money Laundering/ Countering the Financing of Terrorism framework. Ireland’s anti-money laundering framework was assessed by the global standard-setter, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Ireland was found to have “a generally sound legislative and institutional AML/CFT framework”.

The Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) (Amendment) Act 2021 strengthens existing anti-money laundering legislation and gives effect to provisions of the Fifth EU Money Laundering Directive.  

In line with international standards adopted by the FATF, and the EU's legislative framework, Ireland has developed a solid regulatory framework for preventing money laundering. This Act strengthens existing anti-money laundering legislation and contains a renewed focus on gatekeepers of financial systems. It ensures that there is increasing transparency by bringing further institutions within the scope of the Irish anti-money laundering regulatory framework and by combatting the use of new trends and technologies employed by criminals. It also ensures that our regulatory framework keeps pace with the increasing integration of financial flows in the internal market, the evolving trends, technological developments and the prevention of organised crime.