94.— (1) Any person who makes any false or misleading statement in any application or notice of appeal under this Act or in any document required thereunder or otherwise gives false or misleading information to the Authority or the Appeal Board is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a class A fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both.

(2) Subject to subsection (3), where a licensee is convicted of an offence under subsection (1), the court may, after having regard to the nature of the offence and the circumstances in which it was committed, order that the licence held by the licensee be revoked and that the former licensee be prohibited (which may be a permanent prohibition, a prohibition for a specified period or a prohibition subject to specified conditions) from applying for any new licence or a particular class of new licence.

(3) An order under subsection (2) shall not take effect until—

(a) the ordinary time for bringing an appeal against the conviction concerned or the order has expired without any such appeal having been brought,

(b) any such appeal has been withdrawn or abandoned, or

(c) on any such appeal, the conviction or order, as the case may be, is upheld.

(4) Where—

(a) a contravention of a provision of this Act or of regulations made under this Act is committed by a body corporate, and

(b) the contravention is proved to have been committed with the consent, connivance or approval of, or to have been attributable to any neglect on the part of, a person who was either—

(i) a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or

(ii) a person purporting to act in any such capacity,

that person is also guilty of an offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished as if the person were guilty of the contravention referred to in paragraph (a).

(5) Where the affairs of a body corporate are managed by its members, subsection (4) shall apply in respect of the acts or defaults of a member in connection with the member's functions of management as if the member were a director or manager of the body corporate.

(6) Subsections (4) and (5) shall, with all necessary modifications, apply in respect of offences under this Act committed by an unincorporated body.

(7) The Authority may bring and prosecute summary proceedings for an offence under this Act (including an offence under section 28).

(8) Notwithstanding section 10(4) of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851, summary proceedings for an offence under this Act to which that provision applies may be instituted—

(a) within 12 months from the date on which the offence was committed, or

(b) within 6 months from the date on which evidence sufficient, in the opinion of the person instituting the proceedings, to justify proceedings comes to that person’s knowledge,

whichever is the later, provided that no such proceedings shall be commenced later than 2 years from the date on which the offence concerned was committed.

(9) For the purposes of subsection (8)(b), a certificate signed by or on behalf of the person initiating the proceedings as to the date on which evidence referred to in that subsection came to his or her knowledge shall be evidence of that date and, in any legal proceedings, a document purporting to be a certificate under this subsection and to be so signed shall be admitted as evidence without proof of the signature of the person purporting to sign the certificate, unless the contrary is shown.