Apathy on regulation costs us dear - Under-resourced regulation
Few societies that imagine themselves modern, progressive and reliable democracies have paid as high a price as we have for our indifference to proper, well-resourced regulators. Even fewer, once the alarming consequences of this crime-facilitating neglect are realised, continue to tolerate a failed status quo and demand a new culture of oversight, accountability, and meaningful sanctions. It seems we do.
It’s almost 20 years since the horrors inflicted on vulnerable children, especially in institutions established to offer shelter, could not be ignored any longer. The evil uncovered was on such a scale that any humane person would imagine a chastened, shamed society would do whatever was necessary to make a recurrence impossible. Tragically, but all too predictably, the Grace case and too many others like it show that reasonable expectation was another misjudgement.
It’s just 10 years since our financial regulators were, in that accusatory phrase that makes a joke of the idea of oversight, “asleep at the wheel”. So asleep that the deeply damaging description of Dublin as the “wild west of European finance” was entirely justified.
It would be wonderful, in that phrase so beloved by those exposed to unexpected attention, to “move on” but the daily interest bill for the bank bailout of €1.6m makes that difficult. That difficulty is exacerbated by the fact, little less than the most audacious two-fingers to all of us, that no banker, or professional that facilitated their appalling behaviour, has been held accountable in a way that looks even moderately discomfiting. This remains a blight on our democracy and will continue to be such until it is resolved in a way that shows that the idea of justice has some meaning at all levels of society.
These are two big-picture examples of what happens when the rules are inadequate or rendered irrelevant by lip-service or under-resourced regulators. Last week, in Dublin we saw an example of how this low-energy regulation played out in a case involving a man caught with 60,000 child abuse images. Sentencing retired Department of Children civil servant Brendan Phelan, Judge Martin Nolan said there had been an “unfortunate delay” due to a lack of Garda resources. Phelan was charged last year but the relevant raid was conducted in 2013.
That delay adds to the impression, particularly in relation to white-collar crime, that our police are asked to resolve a gunfight with a very small pocket knife. The first gardaí to graduate in fraud and e-crime investigation got their qualifications last December. It is not a criticism of the gardaí to suggest that in our world, where cyber wars rage all around us, this is underwhelming and inadequate. Those responsible for sustaining a strong police force are to blame.
In a short while there will be an election and no-one will be able to form a government without support from an unrepresentative minority. Our culture of faux regulation is one of the reasons for this stifling dilemma. How better off we might be if we were serious about regulation and the laws we enact with such unjustified self-aggrandisement. What a price we pay for light-touch, pretend regulation.
