Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Section 52(a) states:

If the Bank suspects on reasonable grounds that— (a) a person is committing or has committed a prescribed contravention, or

(b) a person is participating or has participated, while performing a relevant controlled function, in the commission of a prescribed contravention by a regulated financial service provider, it may, except where the person acknowledges the commission of or participation in the prescribed contravention, enter into an agreement under this section in writing with the person to resolve the matter".

This concerns a case where the Central Bank is of the view that a person is committing a contravention, in a bank or regulated financial service provider, the individual is denying this and the bank enters into an agreement in writing to resolve this matter. I assume this takes the form of the person concerned denying that he or she is doing anything wrong but will stop doing it, without admitting to doing it. This is really what this section does. From the Central Bank's point of view, the contravention stops. From the perspective of the person concerned, however, he or she is not held accountable and has never accepted that he or she was committing contravention. I would like to tease this out. I can understand that some of these infractions may be very minor and instead of going through a whole process, I can understand the motivation behind this approach. It is important, however, to tease this section out.