I will answer the last question on the Act first. The 2002 Act, which the Tánaiste brought through the Dáil, was very substantial. It was excellent, dealt with many problems and transferred the merger function. By the standards of 2001-02, it was very courageous and showed a great commitment to competition policy.
I do not want to be interpreted today, as saying there are flaws in the Act. What I have said is that there are measures in other jurisdictions that we would still do well to look at. I spoke in particular about matters that were not really examined by the competition and merger review group, which did excellent work. It did its work within an environment in which there was very little acceptance of the need for competition policy. Incremental change is the way to do this. I have drawn attention to three features in other jurisdictions: the ability to impose civil fines in the system; the correct allocation of responsibility in terms of decision making between the courts and the authority; and the complex monopoly-type revisions in the UK. I encourage all concerned to examine these in any future analysis. I will address them. The Department and the Minister have been extremely co-operative in working with us to determine how the Act can be improved. It is early days in terms of a new Act although, in some sense, these issues precede July 2002.
The frustration felt by the Deputy over our not being able to comment on active investigations is nothing compared to the frustration that I and everybody in the office sometimes feel. One could work on something for a year and not be able to say anything to anybody outside about it. It could be the sexiest, hottest issue in the newspapers every day but one could not say one is doing anything about it.
Parties under investigation, be it a civil or criminal investigation, have rights. We would never want to prejudice a criminal investigation. It would be all too easy to make accusations but we have a statutory position and must be very careful about what we say publicly. Companies and individuals who work in them have rights and when they are incorrectly accused or accused during an investigation before something has been shown to have happened, it has very seriously damaging effects on them and their stock market price, etc., especially where very large corporations are concerned. We have a very high duty, which is unfortunate, but that is how our law works.
I did not go into the detail of how the office is structured internally but I gave the resource figures. On the question of priorities, we are very much driven by evidence. If we find evidence of a breach we will pursue it. That is an important thing for an enforcement agency to do. Obviously, we like it when that evidence is found in a market that is large or more important to the economy than others. Evidence is central to what we do because we have to get our cases through the courts. In the early days, we need to take the best possible cases and take the cream off the top.
We have a three year strategy statement, which is brought out within the six months as required under the new Act. We have an external board, which we appoint voluntarily. There is nothing in the Act requiring us to do so, but good governance requires it. It is an external board consisting of Ronald Long, assistant secretary in the Department; Francis Ruane, professor of economics in Trinity College; Gerald Hogan, SC; Gerald FitzGerald, partner in McCann FitzGerald; and John Travers, former chief executive of Forfás. They meet us periodically. At the beginning of each year, we review our strategy statement and create a work programme for the year. If the committee wants to see the work programme, we will be very happy to provide it.
We take our strategy formulation and corporate governance responsibilities far more seriously even than is required under the Act. Even during the past three months, with the upsurge in merger notifications, I have had to reallocate resources within the agency on several occasions. There is constant resource reallocation to make sure we are dealing with issues of priority. Mergers always get the first call because the statute requires tight time limits and reasoned decisions. We then engage in enforcement and advocacy, in that order.