David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for facilitating this session today. We are inserting four new sections into the Bill, all of which are technical in nature. The amendments concern the application of Section 5A - questioning of persons detained under section 4 not generally permitted pending access to legal advice - of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, as inserted by Section 9(a) of the Criminal Justice Act 2011 to the detention provisions of three Statutes, namely the Offences Against the State Act 1939, the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996 and the Criminal Justice Act 2007. Section 5A concerns the well-established right of a person in Garda custody to access legal advice and is aimed at clarifying the circumstances in which questioning may proceed, notwithstanding that a suspect has not yet had an opportunity to consult a solicitor. It is an established policy principle that the relevant provisions of the 1984 Act relating to detentions made under Section 4 of that Act should also apply to detentions made under the aforementioned three criminal justice statutes. Sections 9(b), 13 and 14 of the Criminal Justice Act 2011 apply the new Section 5A of the 1984 Act to the statutes in question. However, difficulties have arisen from the fact that both the Criminal Justice Act 2011 and the Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Act 2014 amend the same provisions of the three statutes in question and while the amendments contained in the 2014 Act have already been commenced, those of the 2011 Act have not. The fact that the provisions of the 2011 Act will be commenced after those of the 2014 Act has given rise to uncertainty as to what the final outcome of the amended detention provisions will be. The Office of the Attorney General has advised that the most prudent way to clarify the matter is to draw up new provisions providing for the application of Section 5A to the detention provisions of the three statutes in question and to repeal the application of the provisions of the 2011 Act. That is what these amendments effectively achieve.

We began with a bail Bill but because we are making changes to it which are outside of bail law, we had to pass a motion in the Dáil last night to allow this to happen. Normally, we would just introduce Government amendments on Committee Stage and present them here but we had to make these changes by way of a motion in the Dáil, which is quite unusual. It also means that we are widening the scope of the Bill and changing its Title. That is why the motion, which was technical in nature, had to be dealt with last night. Normally we would just bring the amendments to this committee and present them but we could not do so in this instance. I thank the members for their indulgence in that regard.