Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I agree with the Deputies on two points. First, Deputies will be aware that we are working towards the consolidation of legislation, particularly given that much of our legislation dates from approximately a century ago. Second, most people cannot understand the language used in legislation, other than the lawyers who make their living out of interpreting it. That idea should be progressed further. Notwithstanding that, however, I do not propose to accept the amendments for the following reasons. Deputy Costello has asked that the additional protocol and certain parts of the Schengen Convention should be added as Schedules to the Bill. In this legislation, however, we are not giving effect to the full protocol. While the protocol contains articles, only two contain substantive provisions — they are Articles 2 and 3. Of these, Ireland is proposing to operate only Article 2. In those circumstances therefore it would be inappropriate and possibly misleading to schedule the entire protocol when we are giving effect to only a part of it.

Deputies will also be aware that the protocol relates to the main convention. Ireland gave effect to that main convention in the Transfer of Sentenced Persons Act 1995. Scheduling the protocol in the case of the Bill before the House seems odd when the main convention itself has not been scheduled in the 1995 Act. Scheduling the protocol in these circumstances might lead to confusion as to the exact legal position. Such an outcome would defeat the purpose of the amendment.

In the case of the Schengen Convention, the amendment proposes that a number of parts, but not all of it, should be added to the Schedule. Some of the parts that are proposed to be added have little bearing on the matters in this Bill. The Bill gives effects to just three articles — Articles 67 to 69, inclusive — dealing with the transfer of the enforcement of criminal judgments, which is Chapter 5 of Part 3. These are the only articles of the convention that are referred to in the Long Title to the Bill.

The proposal may therefore be outside the scope of the Long Title, or at least at variance with the Long Title. That fact, along with the disjointed nature of the material it is proposed should be added, has the potential to create much confusion and uncertainty as to the precise scope of the Bill, which is exactly what I imagine most Deputies do not want to happen in this legislation.

As I have already said concerning the proposal to add the protocol to the Schedule, this outcome would defeat the intention behind the amendment. In light of what Deputies have said about clarity of language, I do not think they would want to defeat that purpose. For those reasons, I do not propose to accept the amendments.

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