Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I forgive the Vice Chair. I join others in thanking the witnesses for their powerful testimony and their pre-meeting submission, which was very helpful to us. This is one of the most difficult aspects of crime to prosecute. We made progress in recent times on it, but our history has not been good. The issue is always to balance the presumption of innocence in a fair trial with avoiding the re-traumatisation of victims. As has been stated, we have just passed new legislation in the Dáil which has to go to the Seanad on pretrial hearings. That is the area I want to ask a question about. How much can we address at the pretrial level, particularly in the context of pre-recorded testimony? A great deal of the evidence we have received refers to undue delay and lack of memory and, therefore, people almost being tricked or trapped into trying to recall things in a level of detail. How much can we capture immediately post the alleged crime and present that as uncontested evidence? Is there scope there?

Similarly, in regard to the structure of the courts themselves, I am interested in the view of the representatives from Rape Crisis Network Ireland. We had great discussion in the past about making courts child-friendly and unintimidating. Do we need to fundamentally look at the physical structure of the courts? Can we do anything in that regard?

It is a given that we need to look at legal representation for victims. We all know that the only one not properly represented, often by the taxpayer, is the victim. That is something that really needs to be addressed.

My final question mirrors one previously put in circumstances where we ran out of time to get an answer. I am desperately concerned about the impact of Covid, both on the number of unreported incidents of domestic violence that I think will be horrendous, quite frankly, and the capacity of the courts system to deal with it. It will be incredibly difficult if there are years of delay in dealing with these crimes when they come to light.