Mr. Dara Hayes:

I thank the Vice Chairman. I speak now on behalf of the Bar Council. On Deputy Pringle’s question on the undue leniency appeals and what appears to be their high rate of success, it is important to say that the bar that is set by the Court of Appeal in respect of a change of sentence with regard to undue leniency is by its very nature not one of leniency but of undue leniency and it is quite a high test. For that purpose, the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, in my experience, tends to be quite careful in the cases that she selects to go forward. She does not apply for appeals in terms of leniency, where in her view a sentence is merely lenient, but she needs to form the view that it has been unduly lenient. She carefully selects the appeals that are taken and the ones that are taken are those that tend to have fallen quite far outside what would be considered the norm. The reason that these cases have had such a high success rate is because she does not appeal the ones, in my experience, that might be considered more marginal. It is only in the cases that are strikingly lenient, perhaps, that the appeals are taken.