Tá buíochas ag dul don Aire as seo a chur os ár gcomhair inniu. Mar a dúirt mo chomhghleacaí, is trua nach raibh sé os ár gcomhair roimhe seo agus nach raibh an dul chun cinn déanta go dtí seo. I welcome this legislation. This is not the way to do this; it should have been done in a stand-alone Bill. This is substantial legislation, which is welcome, of course. We are not going to get the proper time to tease through all of the implications and the bits that are missing. Hopefully, when the Bill is in the Seanad, the Minister will be able to address some of the shortfalls or omissions that have been pointed out already by the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, which has raised issues. There are simple, technical issues which can be addressed and I hope we will have time, when discussing amendments, to point to some of those. This is about correcting a wrong this State presided over, even if all it did was continue a tradition of the British where the abominable crime deserved penal servitude for life, or death as a felon because of, according to them, "outrages of decency". There are no exact figures for the numbers of people convicted of the offences during the reign of this State. Some figures suggest there were 1,000 or more convictions between the 1920s and 1993. However, there were probably thousands more because sometimes when people were charged, they jumped bail. Others evaded the courts. Some were acquitted. There was stigma attached to them. Some had cases dropped as they had funds or because of the scandal associated with it. Others died of suicide in that period. These are the types of people whose families or loved ones, hopefully - because many of them have passed this stage - will be able to apply for the disregard and the independent person will be able to make quick adjudications and will have the access because I do not think the range of files that will be needed is complete. The Mental Health Commission, for instance, controls all of the papers from Portrane and places like that. Some of the people charged were put into what at the time were called "lunatic asylums". Maybe those places are where the paperwork is to be found. Maybe between this Stage and the Bill being taken in the Seanad, we can look at making sure that those who are required to give records are defined broadly enough so as to ensure that if there is an eventuality, there will be no restriction or any way that a State organ can refuse or block any such access to records.

Sentiment score: -0.05