Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 32:

In page 24, line 36, to delete “relevant record” and substitute “counselling record”.

It is more straightforward than it looks. These are amendments to section 38 of the Bill which introduces a new section 19A into the Criminal Evidence Act 1992, providing for the disclosure of third party records for the purpose of criminal proceedings involving sexual offences. There has been a lot of demand for these issues to be dealt with in legislation and a lot of relevant points were made by those involved in counselling, psychotherapy and so on. All the Government amendments, excluding amendment No. 34, substitute the term "counselling record" for "relevant record" in each place where it occurs in section 38. The amendments are included on the advice of the Attorney General on the basis that the use of the term "relevant record" to describe what, in fact, are counselling records causes confusion in the context of relevance. If the record is called a "relevant record" from the outset it is confusing for the court to be asked to determine the relevance of the record to an issue at trial for the purposes of deciding whether or not it should be disclosed.

Amendment No. 34 is a technical amendment. A sexual offence is currently defined in section 38(1) by reference to section 3 of the Sex Offenders Act. Section 3 includes all offences in the Schedule to the 2001 Act with a number of exceptions, some of which relate to the length of sentence imposed on the offender. These exemptions are not appropriate to the definition of sexual offence in the context of disclosure of records and the proposed amendment defines sexual offence in terms of the Schedule to the 2001 Act only, which is the appropriate way to do it.

May I speak to Deputy O'Callaghan's amendment?