A few weeks ago, I raised with the Taoiseach some scandalous transactions by a number of financial advisers that have led to genuine investors getting stung for millions. Since raising this issue, I have been contacted by numerous people who have had their honest savings robbed. The last time I spoke on this, I knew of around ten people who were affected. Now, I have at least 60 people who are in this situation. The number is rising.

The regulation of standards and practice is the norm for many areas of work in this State. In healthcare, we have HIQA, which conducts regular inspections of our health service to ensure standards are met and users are safe. In the food and hospitality industry, the Food Safety Authority ensures that standards are met by means of carrying out regular inspections of premises. In the pharmaceutical industry, the European Medicines Agency regulates medicines for human use, ensuring their safety, quality and efficiency. In the financial services sector, regulation is the remit of the Central Bank but regulation of financial advisers appears to be practically non-existent, leaving the ordinary investor at the mercy of some unscrupulous individuals. How can a financial adviser take money from clients for investment in a company that is regulated by the Central Bank, provide loan notes which are not covered by the Central Bank, and put the company into receivership, while the client loses his or her money? That same adviser can then set up another company and start all over again, with no repercussions. Some advisers have done this 11 times already.

I reached out to the Central Bank seeking a meeting but to no avail. That led me to think whether this is a further cover up. The Central Bank is, in my view, equally culpable here. This raises a number of questions for the bank. What is the Central Bank doing in terms of regulation if financial advisers can fleece investors with impunity? How many audits of financial advisers does the Central Bank carry out each year? Will the Central Bank disclose details of these audits? Why are loan notes unregulated? Why does the Central Bank allow financial advisers to behave in this manner without sanction? Many people in my constituency and in many other constituencies face financial ruination having been let down by the Central Bank while the financial advisers, who they trusted and who they understood to be regulated by the Central Bank, have run off with their money to another country under the guise of bankruptcy. The amounts for which constituents have been caught include €750,000, €500,000, €350,000, €52,000, €50,000 and much more.

It is now obvious that regulation by the Central Bank does not exist. Does the Government have the power to launch an investigation into the workings of the Central Bank? Will the Taoiseach work with me to get a meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank in order to get answers to the many questions that are out there about Central Bank-regulated advisers who have robbed millions of euro of people's savings?

The Deputy raised this a number of weeks ago. There are laws in place and there is a regulator. The regulator is the Central Bank. There is a tendency in the House to keep asking if we can investigate this and investigate that, but the established regulators have a function and an obligation to investigate if they receive complaints. I am not clear whether the individuals who have been defrauded, as the Deputy asserted, have made formal complaints in respect of the adviser to whom the Deputy refers or the companies in which that adviser was involved in establishing. Have actual complaints been sent to the Central Bank in respect of that? It is important to establish that, particularly as there are Central Bank registers. It is extremely important that customers are aware of the risk of fraud and related scams and that they ensure that the person or entity they are dealing with is registered with the Central Bank of Ireland. Those registers are available free online. The Central Bank also publishes warnings about unauthorised firms and will sometimes list such firms.

I presume this person was a registered broker. I will ask if the Deputy can meet with the Minister for Finance in relation to this, to take him through the details. The Minister has, from a policy perspective, some interaction with the Central Bank, which is independent in terms of the conduct of its work. If a business has shut down - and the Deputy has suggested that a business closed down and then another business was established by the same person - any new business would also require authorisation by the Central Bank before it can undertake activities which are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. That authorisation process requires and includes a Central Bank fitness and probity review in respect of all of the key roles to lead the business and so forth.

There are individual accountability frameworks within regulation. The Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Act 2023 sets out clearly and fully where responsibility lies in regulated firms and includes conduct standards. If the Central Bank suspects, on reasonable grounds, that a subject has committed a prescribed contravention, it is in a position to hold an inquiry to determine whether the subject has committed such a contravention. There are strong sanctions in relation to individuals.

It would be useful to know more. The Deputy sent me some documents in the past hour but I have not had a chance to go through them. I will read that material. I am not clear why the Central Bank has not engaged.

I do not know if the Deputy has written to the Central Bank to make submissions to it on the people he has spoken about here.

Yes. I wrote to the Central Bank two weeks ago and I have heard nothing back since. There are legal cases being taken at the moment. The fraud squad is also involved. When I raised this question in the Dáil the last time, the fraud squad contacted people immediately afterwards. I sent the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance two sample cases this morning. I respect that the Taoiseach needs to look at that in his own time.

When I talk about financial advisers, I do not want to tar all of them with the one brush as most are honest in their dealings. I want to talk about those who are scam operators and who, as I said the last time I spoke to the Taoiseach three weeks ago, drive around in top of the range SUVs and are seen drinking champagne outside bars or on the side of the street, laughing at those who now cannot retire or who have retired and who have been robbed of their savings because these despicable people cannot be touched. It is time to hit the untouchables. They have ruined innocent people’s lives. It is time to have these people put behind bars. The only way this can be done is to have a full investigation into the Central Bank's procedures and weed out the reasons how these scam financial advisers were able to play nod-and-wink with the Central Bank and avoid any regulation.

I welcome that the fraud squad seems to be, or is, involved, as the Deputy said. That is good news. It is reprehensible for anybody to defraud another person of funds, particularly their savings, through fraudulent investments. Nobody is untouchable. They can be touched and investigated and there is a process for doing it. We in this country are always going back to investigate the investigator. We do not need an investigation into the Central Bank, I suggest, but an investigation into the individuals whose fraudulent behaviour the Deputy has highlighted in the Dáil. That is what we need. That is why we establish regulators and resource them. We put a lot of funding into regulators. Fundamentally, into the future, the country must use existing regulatory authorities to do the majority of investigations. We love setting up commissions of investigation - inquiries that cost millions of euro, spend years at it and not getting the closure that people want in all cases. There is real law and sanctions here. We should pursue those avenues.