Mr. Tom O'Malley:

Again, we hope this would be a reasonably short project. The reason we put it on the agenda is because in 2006 for the first very time in this country, the suspended sentence was given a statutory foundation. Everybody here knows that a suspended sentence is where a court imposes a term of imprisonment but suspends it for a certain period of time and the sentence will not then be enforced if the person keeps the conditions imposed on them during that period. It has been in existence for well over a century but it was given a statutory foundation in 2006 in section 99, which is now rather infamous because it has caused an enormous amount of legal problems in terms of the detail of its implementation and has constantly been the subject of judicial reviews in the courts. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea to look at the suspended sentence to review the way in which section 99 has operated and to deal with any outstanding aspects.

Again, I am speaking off the cuff but no more than previous stories, it is fair to say that perhaps the Department, the Director of Public Prosecutions and other State offices might already be looking at the technical side of this. They were of the view that if they were to do that, there was still useful work for us to do in this regard by, for example, producing a report, which will be a short one, on the principles that should govern the use of the suspended sentence such as when it is appropriate for a court to use a suspended sentence. It will produce general guidelines on the circumstances in which it might be appropriate to use it. That is probably where it will go.