Mr. Vivian Geiran:

While Dr. Fitzgerald-O'Reilly has made valid points on the need to avoid arbitrariness on the one hand and, on the other, ensure proportionality and necessity, I agree with our PSNI colleagues. This legislation would provide useful specific measures.

As far as I am aware, it is currently possible for a judge to make such an order, for example, as part of a post-release supervision order. The proposed legislation would provide specifically for how that should be done.

As is often the case, whatever legislation goes through will be furthered developed and planned for and the various rules of court, jurisprudence and so on will be developed. How the various agencies arrange their work will also develop. For example, if a probation officer was preparing an assessment for court, he or she might address the issue of travel in particular cases. It is useful that the legislation provides that any such decision would be made by a judge.

Dr. Fitzgerald-O'Reilly's points about resources and the supervision of someone who had been allowed to travel were important. I do not want to open up a whole other area of legislative debate, but legislation on the transfer of probation decisions between EU member states is due to go through the Oireachtas. It does not deal with next year's United Kingdom scenario, but there will be Irish legislation providing for the mutual recognition and transfer of supervision of probation-type orders in EU member states. That is one element of how the matters raised could be addressed.