Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

This amendment raises an interesting debate and I commend Deputy Howlin on tabling it. When updating the criminal justice system, we must take into account the enormous changes made not just recently with technology but in the social structure and legal supports in the past hundred years. We have moved from a situation where an individual who was accused was left with no proper defence and in some cases did not have an entitlement to be defended. The accused very often had little or no education and was the victim of the establishment of the time. In many such cases, people were wrongly prosecuted or for political or other reasons, with no possibility of an independent assessment. The pendulum has now swung very much the other way and anybody who is accused of a serious crime has all the defences and legal support available to him or her.

It was stated in the recent conference that a slip of any kind on the part of the prosecution, often even of a technical nature, means the accused can go free. The public would be outraged if we did not give serious consideration to a proposal of this kind. In the past, miscarriages of justice were always associated with the fact that an accused may have been wrongly convicted, but we are considering the other side of the coin, namely, the situation where a person, perhaps accused of a most serious crime, may have been wrongly acquitted.

What brings this matter into focus is the type of evidence that is now available through DNA. In some instances, virtually conclusive proof can be available proving somebody's involvement with a crime where no such evidence was available five, ten or 15 years ago at the time when the crime was committed. We must look seriously at the issues raised by Deputy Howlin. We must also bear in mind in any rebalancing of the law the need to ensure that the public interest is safeguarded as much as the position of the accused. I question whether the pendulum has gone too far and, in the light of these modern developments, whether the public interest is still being served. The issues raised by Deputy Howlin deserve the most serious consideration.

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