Transparency International’s 2018 Exporting Corruption report rates countries based on their enforcement against foreign bribery under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
The report finds that Ireland has yet to prosecute any company alleged to have bribed foreign officials and is considered to be among 18 countries that have little or no enforcement of the Convention. The Convention was ratified by Ireland in 2001 and made it a crime for Irish companies to bribe officials overseas.
Only 11 of the 44 jurisdictions rated conduct active or moderate enforcement against companies bribing abroad. These are Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and United States (active enforcement); and Australia, Brazil, Portugal and Sweden (moderate enforcement).
TI has recommended that the Irish Government:
- collect and proactively provide information on concrete enforcement efforts, including on the number of complaints relating to foreign bribery investigated or sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions
- repeal the amendment to the Protected Disclosures Act which makes it an offence to use or disclose ‘trade secrets’ when reporting corruption unless a whistleblower can defend his or her motivation in doing so.
- improve its capacity and level of resources to detect, investigate and prosecute cases of foreign bribery