Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I told the Taoiseach last week that in my view if an offence is deemed unconstitutional, the trial and conviction are invalid as is the subsequent imprisonment. The Taoiseach said that nobody would walk free as a result of the Supreme Court judgment. This is the same Taoiseach who asks me now to be assured that other aspects of the criminal law will protect our children from this weekend on. Nothing the Taoiseach has said since this crisis happened lends credence to that assurance. Aspects of the criminal law may indeed protect some children but it goes without saying that what has happened here leaves many children vulnerable to predators without any protection from the law. That is a fact and the Taoiseach knows it is a fact.

I ask the Taoiseach again what he intends to do about it. What is all this confusion about? When it first broke, the Taoiseach did not even know the number of prisoners, for example, who would be affected. He is now trying to say that the age-old convention is that any Minister or head of a Department whose laws under his or her aegis are the subject of contest in the Supreme Court would not know about it. Of course they would know about it. Of course the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform knew this action was in train. If he did not know, he ought to have known. What is more important than the protection of our children? Is the Minister seriously telling this House that such an action was before the Supreme Court and he was completely unaware of it? To suggest the Supreme Court was seized of this matter and the Minister did not know is an act of gross dereliction, if that is true.

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