Book review: 'The confiscation of criminal assets: law and procedure' by J. Paul Mccutcheon and Dermot P. J. Walsh (Round Hall Sweet and Maxwell, 2000)

• Author: Michael Moriarty
• Position: Judge of the High Court
• Pages: 157-162

BOOK REVIEW: “THE CONFISCATION OF

CRIMINAL ASSETS: LAW AND

PROCEDURE”

BY J. PAUL MCCUTCHEON AND DERMOT P.

J. WALSH

(ROUND HALL SWEET AND MAXWELL,

2000)

THE HON. MR. JUSTICE MICHAEL MORIARTY*

Did that play of mine send out

certain men the English shot?1

Towards the end of his life, Yeats in “Man and the

Echo” reflected on the degree to which his earlier work might

have contributed towards the traumatic events in Ireland of

two decades previously. Somewhat similar questions are

raised by the present authors in this valuable and stimulating

series of essays on the legislation introduced in 1994 and

1996 to enable confiscation of criminal assets; was the 1996

Proceeds of Crime Act in particular an emotive and

excessively hasty response to the brutal killings of Detective

Garda Gerry McCabe and Veronica Guerin, and did it

wrongly and unconstitutionally seek to superimpose a civil

standard of proof and set of procedures upon areas that ought

to have remained the sole preserve of criminal law?

Lest any reminder of essential provisions be of

benefit, the Proceeds of Crime Act, 1996, provides for the

confiscation of property valued in excess of £10,000 where a

court is satisfied that the property constitutes the Proceeds of

2001] Book Review: “Confiscation of Criminal Assets” 157

1 Finnegan (ed.), W.B. Yeats: The Poems, p. 345.

*Judge of the High Court.