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

The position is that we cannot go beyond maximum sentencing for an outright prohibition when it comes to the offender's work. Therefore, if the maximum sentence is ten years and he or she serves five, the prohibition is five years. In a lot of the serious cases, it is life imprisonment, so it means it would apply for life. This refers to where it is not a life sentence. As I said, if it was a particular crime where the maximum penalty is ten years and somebody serves five years, then the maximum that can be applied in terms of an outright prohibition is five years to bring it up to the ten. In the most severe cases, a person will generally receive a life sentence. Obviously, that means he or she goes before the parole board after 12 years and goes through that whole process, but that would mean it is an outright ban for life, irrespective of whether he or she gets out after 15 or 20 years, or whatever other length of time.

This is set out in the legal advice as to how this must be applied. There are obviously other mechanisms. If it is a sentence that has a maximum of ten years, as in the example I have given, there are obviously other mechanisms in place so an offender must still inform his or her employer that he or she has been convicted of a sexual offence. There is also a Garda vetting process and anybody who engages with children will have to go through that process if they are being employed, be it by a charity, a community, a school or any other type of environment. There are those built-in mechanisms separate to where somebody is serving a life sentence, where it would apply for the remainder of the person's life.