Council told that a change in the law is required in order to ring fence seized assets for community initiatives

The Minister for Justice and Meath East TD has told Meath county councillors that the cross-agency system of seizing criminals’ assets is the most effective way of dealing with the proceeds of crime.

She was replying to the council following the passing of a notice of motion at the December 2020 meeting of the council calling for more urgent measures to ensure that proceeds of crime are redirected back into local drug addiction services, youth organisations and community initiatives to resource prevention, education and supportive projects. The motion had been tabled by independent Cllr Gillian Toole and was directed to the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure. She said that a change in law was necessary was needed to allow this “vital” funding support to happen. She told the March meeting of the council that the current method of seizing assets and redistributing them was not effective. She said the drug problem was increasing and had deteriorated badly during the pandemic.

In her letter to the county council, Minister McEntee said that it was a matter of great importance that the proceeds of crime were recovered and invested back into keeping communities safe. She said that under present legislation the proceeds of crime were transferred to the Minister for Finance to be paid into, or disposed of, for the benefit of the Exchequer. It was from this central fund which the Government draws for expenditure on all necessary public services and investment, including for communities affected by crime.

Any change in that process would be a matter for the Department of Finance and Public Expenditure.

The remit of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) was to target a person’s assets derived from criminal conduct. The agency was regarded as the best practice model in the context of combating organised crime, and it worked very closely with law enforcement bodies both nationally and internationally. “The actions of the bureau send a strong message to criminals and to local communities that profiting from crime will not be tolerated”, Minister McEntee said.

While allowing for a very small number of very specific targeted exceptions, it was believed that earmarking revenues for a specific expenditure programme would, in general constrain the Government in the implementation of an overall expenditure policy, she said. It could also be argued that a significant proportion of the monies seized by the bureau were already owed to the Exchequer as it often related to the non-payment of taxes and to social welfare fraud.

There were also very practical difficulties as the variable and uncertain nature of the value of the assets seized by the bureau in any given year , in addition to the potential delays through the possibility of legal challenge to court disposal orders, would be problematic in terms of the provision of ongoing funding to community services. She also said that if the monies collected by the bureau were to be diverted to community services, there would inevitably be implications for any other monies those services received from the Exchequer.

The Minister pointed out that in this jurisdiction responsibility for the identification, tracing, freezing and ultimate confiscation of criminal assets did not rest with a single body but rather across a number of agencies and statutory bodies including the Gardai, Criminal Assets Bureau, Revenue, the Chief State Solicitor’s Office, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the courts.