Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand where the Deputy is coming from. There is an onus on the prosecution and defence to highlight particular issues they want to raise at the pretrial hearing. It is important that these are not put off and it is claimed later that something has arisen and needs to be raised. Section 6(17) provides that there is an obligation on the prosecution and accused to inform the trial court of any orders. That would apply, irrespective of whether they be sexual offence cases, where they intend to seek that at the first available opportunity. These issues need to be raised at preliminary trial hearings. This also takes into account that issues can arise, for example, new evidence, witnesses and other matters can arise throughout a trial. We need to make sure we do not prevent these types of orders from being raised later on in a trial as opposed to at the preliminary trial hearing.

On the language, we are talking about efficiency and disruption and later on where something "may" arise limits the scope under which a decision by a judge can be made as to whether something is admissible. It narrows that provision.

I fully accept we must ensure that as much as possible is addressed in the preliminary trial hearing and that is where we try to deal with it later in section 6(17), where there is an obligation on the prosecution and the accused to inform the trial of any orders they intend to seek at the first available opportunity. It places the onus on all the parties to make any application specifically under this section 3 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981 at the preliminary trial hearing. It also provides protection for later in a case where it may not have been possible to raise these matters in advance.

As I have said, the potential unintended consequence is where there are very specific reasons for acceptance relating to efficiency and disruption, it limits the scope for the judge to deal with the matter. We have dealt with this in section 6(17) but we must pre-empt that there can be unintended issues arising and we need to allow the court to be able to deal with them.