Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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I thank the Deputies for their support for the Bill. There is a cross-party perspective regarding the Bill and that is welcome. We have given the amendments proposed by both Deputies a good deal of consideration. As the members will be aware, the law in England and Wales has been amended recently to provided that sentences up to four years are covered by their Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Some say that this should be the benchmark by which we should devise our own scheme. The Deputies have settled on a period of two years and four years, respectively. It is worth saying that the English and Welsh legislation, which does not apply in Northern Ireland, is now probably the most liberal in the common law world. Meanwhile what we are proposing, when compared with Australia and New Zealand, is at the more liberal end of the spectrum. In most Australian states only prison sentences of six months or less are covered while in New Zealand no one who is sentenced to imprisonment can benefit from their corresponding legislation. In Northern Ireland where sentences of up to 30 months are covered, the rehabilitation period for a six months sentence is seven years from the end of the sentence, as against four years from the date of conviction provided under the Bill.

It is worth recalling also that the genesis of this legislation was the highly regarded Law Reform Commission report on spent convictions, which we all have seen. That report recommended only sentences of six months or less should be covered.

In preparing the legislation the Government decided to go the extra mile and cover sentences of up to 12 months. In that respect, the Government is going further. The 12 month cut-off covers more than 85% of all custodial sentences handed down by the courts in Ireland. By any yardstick, a regime that allows a proportion of custodial sentences to become spent, as in this case, is generous. The 12-month cut-off aligns the regime with the sentencing jurisdiction of the District Court where summary offences are prosecuted.

There will always be opinions on the cut-off point, whether it be 12 months, 24 months or 48 months. From a Government perspective, we are definitely going to stick with a 12-month cut-off. Having spoken to the Minister, Deputy Shatter, and discussed the matter at length, we will revisit this in the coming years and see how it is working. After a number of years we may return to it having regard to some of the suggestions that have been made, but we have to start off somewhere. Given the fact that the cut-off point we propose covers the percentage of convictions that I mentioned, a 12-month cut-off point is appropriate at this time.