Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

——of those who had committed vile crimes against defenceless children, many of them of very tender years. I am as well placed as most Members to say that the crimes against these victims cry to heaven for justice.

While the absence of the "honest mistake" defence in cases of this nature has always been recognised as a rigorous application of law, it went unchallenged in our superior courts for many generations, not without due cause. Many cases of recent years have been heard in the Supreme Court in regard to convictions under this statute and on no occasion was this argument seriously advanced or entertained. Therefore, I share with Members of this House and the parents of young people throughout the country a sense of dismay and outrage at the prospect that six or seven people who have offended grievously against children in this country could seriously be considered for early release on foot of last week's Supreme Court decision. That is why I recoiled when it was put to me last week in certain legal opinion that I should agree to the immediate release from prison — "forthwith", to use a legal expression — of the six or seven men in question who are in custody. I was not prepared to defer to that line of legal reasoning.

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