Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Where is it? Perhaps we might come back to that issue in due course as a committee as it is a vital piece of the jigsaw and was supposed to have been published by the end of 2018. It has been quoted by the Government on numerous occasions. We have been told that we should await the O'Malley review. That is a very sensible suggestion, but for how long do we wait?

There is an existing Legal Aid Board scheme that covers a limited number of sexual offences, including rape. The Bill seeks to extend the range of offences covered. What concerns me is that there has been little uptake of the existing scheme, something on which I ask the delegates to comment. Again, I thank the Library and Research Service for its paper on this issue which shows that the take up of legal advice is very low, with only one application being made in 2018 and four in 2017. That begs the question as to what was the take-up prior to 2017 and 2018. Why is it so low and what, if anything, has been done about it?