Any chance of a speech?
Sentiment score: 0.25
Where are they?
Sentiment score: 0.00
The Minister is meant to produce the speech. And do not speak like that. That is unbecoming.
Sentiment score: -0.09
But the speech should be provided. This is a most comprehensive Bill.
Sentiment score: 0.16
And the Minister speaking like that to Members of the Opposition is not acceptable.
Sentiment score: 0.14
It is the Minister's responsibility to produce the speech.
Sentiment score: 0.00
No, it is the Minister's responsibility to share it.
Sentiment score: 0.00
I have been there, done that.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle.
Sentiment score: 0.36
I will be sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Conor Sheehan. I do not like to criticise the Minister or his Department but bringing in a Bill in this way is crazy. There is so much in it. It is all over the place. That is why we wanted the Minister's speech. He said he spoke off the cuff. Frankly, most of the time he does.
Sentiment score: -0.00
On this occasion, he read it verbatim. The reason he read it verbatim was he has to be very careful about what he is saying on a lot of these things. From a legislative point of view, it is very tricky. This is not good practice and I am surprised at the Minister for behaving in this way in this House. This is so diverse. It includes pepper spray, community service orders, counselling records on sexual offences, sex for rent, changes to bail, remote hearings, electronic documents for court, DNA analysis, issues with outdoor seating for public houses, face coverings and an issue I truly welcome, namely the disregard of convictions relating to consensual same-sex activity. That is as diverse as you can get. It is crazy to do a Bill like this. A few of them I can maybe understand but a number of them deserve to be Bills on their own. A number of us here are on the justice committee. We did not even go through some of these in pre-legislative scrutiny because we did not know the Minister was doing this and he did not provide anything. This is not good practice. I know the Minister is only in his post a year but he is experienced. This is not the way to do things. The Minister should not be doing these things. It is an indictment of him and his Department that he is coming in here and throwing all of this at us, while bringing in a whole range of other amendments we have heard about in the media as well. I will try to run through a number of the issues as quickly as I can. On the issue of pepper spray, our committee was pretty adamant that bringing in a tool like this into a prison service is not exactly good practice. If you listen to the Inspector of Prisons, I think he is on a different track from the Minister. I know the Minister has plans to bring in 1,500 extra prison spaces but if you look at the practice in the UK, you will basically be chasing them. The prisons will end up full again but you are not dealing with the issue. The conditions of the prisons in our country are an absolute disgrace to successive governments. The way they have been left is a disgrace. While I understand the Prison Officers' Association have views on this, the idea we will bring in such capacity into prisons is creating a huge amount of risk. I am concerned about that. I am also concerned about it because we have not had an analysis done in the form of a risk assessment. It will be piloted but we have not done a risk assessment. This is bizarre. It needs to be looked at again and we will certainly do so on Committee Stage. On the changes the Minister is making to community service orders, I very much welcome these. This is something that would help the issues we have in our prisons. It is good practice and it is to be welcomed. The threshold of 24 months and the conditioning of how people will qualify for that really needs to be teased out but it is good practice. The issue I have here is how we are managing the Probation Service. If the Minister has met with it recently, the Probation Service will tell him to his face that it is so stretched. It simply does not have the resources and it does not have the personnel. I know a number of people who work in the service, and they are absolutely stretched as far as they can go. They do not see how they can continue if there is not a complete relook at the way in which they are working. In tallying with this change, absolutely, the Minister is going to have to in some way relook at the Probation Service in a very supportive way, particularly in relation to bringing in more personnel to work there. The issue of counselling records in sexual offences trials is going to be very difficult for the Minister. We believe, and our committee believes, very strongly that this issue has to be dealt with in such a way that this is not going to happen any more. I have met individuals who will not go for counselling. When that is something that comes out as a result of where we are in this country and the case law that has been there, that is deeply worrying. I believe the Minister's bona fides here are probably correct. I understand that this is very tricky constitutionally. I understand it is very tricky from a legislative point of view. I know the Minister is bringing in amendments, and I do not doubt his commitment. However, I am not sure he can actually narrow this down such that when it goes through the courts and through the actual cases of the future, he can separate it out and this would be allowed only in very specific cases, as he said, in relation to people getting a fair trial. I doubt it. There will be legal challenges left, right and centre. I believe there will be a precedent set then and it will fall. I need the Minister to think very carefully on this because I believe that when it comes to Committee Stage and Report Stage, this is, frankly, borderline impossible and he will have to go with the committee's recommendations. I think it is a big struggle for his backbenchers and for his colleagues as well. This is a topic we, as a Legislature, have to deal with, and deal with sensitively and right. I believe the Minister will have to go with the committee's decisions in relation to this because I am not sure that what he is proposing will be sustainable in law. It is definitely the trickiest part of this Bill. I urge the Minister to maybe listen again to all the groups we have met, such as the National Women's Council, One in Four and many more, in relation to this because he needs to reconsider this whole section and how he is going to go about it. I look forward to the Minister's amendments on Committee Stage, but I certainly do not believe this is going to be feasible in the way in which he is prescribing. I am delighted to see that the Minister has finally come forward with legislation in relation to sex for rent. I commend him. I hope he respects the fact that the Labour Party and, indeed, my party colleague Senator Harmon brought forward a Bill on this well over six months ago. In fairness, the Minister met with her, and much of what she put forward is in this Bill. It is beyond time this was done. The Bill amends the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 and creates two new offences. From our perspective, this is very accurate. The first offence is where a person is offering a person accommodation in return for sexual activity in lieu of payment. The second is an offence of advertising or causing to be advertised an offer of accommodation in return for sexual activity in lieu of payment. This is beyond required. It is also important that this is being prescribed in the Bill in two different ways to avoid any form of doubt, which is the way it should be done. The Minister has a range of other measures he is bringing forward as amendments. Before I go through those, in relation to the Bail Act, I am delighted the Minister is putting provisions in the section in relation to coercive control and also with regard to forced marriages. Both are very important areas. It is quite obvious that coercive control is becoming more of an issue. It lacked a definition, so it is very welcome that it has now been defined. It will be a substantive issue that can be used now in relation to the decisions for bail. Forced marriage, unfortunately, is also on the increase as our country changes and as different nationalities come in and everything else. This is something that also crops up quite a number of times. I very much welcome it. We could have looked at other areas in relation to bail, and we may come back with amendments on that as well. Furthermore, the issues relating to court hearings and the electronic sharing of documents are something that should have been addressed years ago. I have actually flagged this myself. I have spoken in this Chamber about it. I have spoken to so many gardaí and people who work in the justice system about this. It is actually ridiculous. It is beyond time that was done. We need further information regarding DNA analysis techniques and what the Minister is proposing in relation to missing persons. In principle, however, I believe we will be supportive. Many people were probably not fully aware of the issues in relation to outdoor seating on public land. I am aware of them, and that needs to be closed off. That is to be welcomed. We need to have a larger discussion in relation to the definitions behind how we are going to deal with face coverings. In principle, I agree with the Minister, but we need to look at the conditioning around how we are going to deal with that. I also want to raise something I raised with the Minister earlier. Today, I published a Bill providing for an update to Coco's Law. I asked the Tánaiste that this issue be dealt with in the coming weeks to deal with the obvious issues in relation to what is happening with online e-commerce companies and online publishers and the fact there is a lacuna in the law. The reason I am raising it here is simple. This may be the avenue on Committee Stage - I do not really care whether it is the Labour Party or the Minister, if he can improve it - where we can bring in changes to ensure that we deal with this issue in a prompt and timely way. We believe there is a lacuna, and we have taken a lot of advice on the issue of where AI-generated or computer-generated images are being developed and then shared by e-commerce publishers. I do not call them platforms. They are publishers, the same as the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, The Times or anything else. They are publishers, and we have to have this scenario now whereby it is an offence for those who behave in such a way and who do this. Gráinne Seoige appeared before the Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport yesterday. It is quite obvious from talking to her and many others that the idea that An Garda Síochána can go around looking for a whole range of different phones is not sustainable. The Garda asks people for their phones, they say "No", that they are not giving the phone, and then the Garda has to get a court order to be able to get the phone. That is not sustainable. We have to deal with this at the stage of the actual publisher, whether that is X, Meta, TikTok, Google or hundreds of others. We must deal with it at that stage, where it is a criminal offence to aid and facilitate the distribution of such images. This issue will be coming in front of the Minister at Cabinet. I would hope that we can deal with this very quickly. This may be the vehicle by which we can do so. I wanted to raise that because, if necessary, we will bring it forward and, if necessary, we will do so in this Bill. Before I let my colleague in, it is very important that I acknowledge the fact that the Minister will bring in through this Bill a disregard of historical convictions in relation to consensual same-sex activity pre 1993. I look forward to it; this is very much welcome. My colleague beside me, Deputy Nash, has been an advocate and has worked on this for well over a decade. In fact, he raised this so often in this Chamber and outside. He is to be commended hugely on it. The Minister might acknowledge campaigners Kieran Rose, my good friend Karl Hayden and Brian Sheehan, who are in the Gallery above us today along with Eddie McGuinness. They are prominent campaigners on behalf of the LGBT community who have put in massive numbers of hours, days, months and years campaigning for so many people to get those convictions from 1993 spent and disregarded. This is very important legislation for them and for many others. I acknowledge and thank them for their campaigning over the past number of years.
Sentiment score: 0.06