Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Both issues will be addressed later this evening in the House. In response to the Supreme Court decision in the CC case in May of last year, the Government passed emergency legislation in early June, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006. On 1 March, Deputy Rabbitte properly identified the deficiency in that legislation in that the new Act did not apply the offence of soliciting or importuning a child for the purpose of the commission of a sexual offence provided for in section 6 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 to the new offence created in the 2006 Act. We have moved to rectify that omission. The House will debate the legislation later.

Section 6 of the 1993 Act is a little-used provision. The Garda Commissioner's annual reports for the past five years do not disclose any convictions for the offence at section 6. However, the Government is not satisfied to leave a gap in our laws governing sexual offences and the protection of children when it has been pointed out, as Deputy Rabbitte has done, lest the absence might in any way hinder or prevent the gardaí, if they wanted to use the legislation, investigating or successfully prosecuting persons for activity that leads to the sexual abuse of children.

A section 6 offence is a summary offence to which the power of detention for questioning does not apply and while, from a purely legal perspective, it is not a matter of urgency to legislate on the issue, it is important to allay public fears by enacting the proposed Bill immediately. That is what we will do.

In the context of its Private Members' Bill, Fine Gael raised the issue of the sexual grooming of children. As I said yesterday, we have examined that issue. It seemed to us, and our legal advice is, that the Fine Gael amendment is fine, so we have included it in the Bill we will pass later today. The Fine Gael Bill is based on section 15 of the UK Sexual Offences Act 2003, under which it is an offence to meet a child following sexual grooming. We are preparing a more comprehensive Bill which will cover a number of these issues — the criminal law (trafficking of persons and sexual offences) Bill, about which Deputy Kenny asked a number of times. The problem is that the Bill is not likely to be ready until Easter so, as it is best to enact this measure, we have taken the Fine Gael proposal and included it in the Bill which will be passed later today.

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