Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I move amendment No. 15:

In page 14, lines 19 and 20, to delete “pursuant to section 29(1)”.

I thank the committee for considering this amendment. This responds to concerns raised that the present definition is too narrow and therefore deems some offenders ineligible. The deletion proposed will facilitate the inclusion of a slightly wider cohort of offenders, including offenders subject to probation supervision for an offence rather than a sexual offence. Such offenders would still need to have a previous conviction for a sexual offence to fall within the definition. These include offenders subject to part-suspended sentence supervision orders, fully-suspended sentence supervision orders, adjourned supervision cases, Circuit Court probation orders and non-statutory supervision cases. By deleting the text as proposed, all offenders who need to be managed through the sex offender risk assessment and management, SORAM, process will be included by virtue of widening the definition and, thereby, the cohort. This just means we will be including more people within this cohort.