Ms Caroline Counihan:

The Deputy asked whether we have observed any problems with legal advice given by the DPP team. The issue for us is that the DPP team gets involved at a much later stage. People often need advice very soon after the offence happens, when they are making up their mind as to whether to report it to An Garda Síochána. That is one area where I have personally dealt with an awful lot of queries regarding how something or other works, what the consequences will be and how the person can protect themselves. There is a whole raft of questions and the extraordinary thing is that, no matter how long I do my job, something new comes up every week. You would be amazed at the variety of questions. People have a lot of questions at that stage, perhaps because they are very anxious in the immediate aftermath of the offence.

Another stage where people need a lot of advice and support is where the DPP has declined to prosecute in their case. As the Deputy will know, they can request a review. To put together a decent application or request for review, they really need legal advice and input into that and they need to know where they are going.

The Deputy also raised the possibility of conflict between advice given at an early stage by an independent legal adviser and advice or information that might come to them later from the prosecution team. To my mind, if the independent legal adviser is doing their job competently, they will lay out the function of the prosecutor and explain that that person, who represents the State, may not have the same interests as the victim at every point. Sometimes, the victim does not have much choice except to accept the decision, but at other times the victim can have input into a prosecution and the decision that is going to be made.

It is about telling it the way it is at an early stage and saying that if, for instance, the person is terrified that there is going to be severe retaliation, they will know what to do, where to raise their concerns and what, in broad terms, the criminal justice system can do, whereby there may be an application for stricter bail conditions or, if there is the potential for very severe intimidation, there might be a revision of the bail conditions to the extent that the accused will end up in custody. It is not about setting oneself up in opposition to the prosecution team but sometimes, as the Deputy suggested, interests do diverge and there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with those divergences.

Thankfully, there are not many and sometimes, in a couple of well-known instances, it has been possible in the sexual violence world to have actual independent legal representation, such as on the issue of the disclosure of counselling records. To my mind, it is about telling it as it is and also explaining that, as the case moves forward, if there is to be a prosecution, it is the prosecutor who will make the decisions, or at least the DPP through the prosecutor appearing in court. The victim can feed into some of that decision-making, and if they have concerns about their safety or about their terror of appearing in court, they should certainly bring that to the attention of the prosecution team.

In real life, it works out, and I have been that person for many years. It is about telling it like it is and realising these decisions of prosecutors, which tend to arise in the initial stages, are for prosecutors, not for the victim. We can by all means advise the victim to raise these concerns but cannot do more than that.