To become 'Irish version of FBI' corporate enforcer needs 'major staffing increase'

A new vision of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement as “an Irish version of the FBI” would bring a requirement for the recruitment of both administrative staff and specialist staff.

Ireland's corporate enforcer said it would need a major increase in manpower to deal with “very well-resourced” white-collar suspects, technological advances that the law struggles to keep up with, and increased insolvency cases from the pandemic’s fallout.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) is to be set up as a stand-alone agency, which had been compared to an “Irish version of the FBI” by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar according to internal records.