Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

Before we get to my party's amendments which have been trailed by the Minister, I want to state that I welcome the inclusion of the sexual assault provision, which goes further than the draft Bill the Labour Party produced last Friday and which is a good addition.

In terms of the genesis of this legislation, I posed another question but I do not know whether the Minister has had an opportunity to address it. The confusion arose over the 2001 Act in which section 250 was quite clear that it did not relate solely to prostitution whereas the explanatory memorandum circulated with the same Bill specifically stated it was increasing the penalties for acts related to prostitution. I do not know how that confusion and conflict between the explanatory memorandum and the Act came to be, but we are where we are on section 2. I thought the restatement of the 1993 offence in the 2001 Act was there to clarify and crystalise the position, or at least seemed to do so on reading it.

I do not know whether I will get an opportunity to deal with the broader issue which for me, as a non-lawyer, it is a complex one, namely, the constitutionality provision that Deputy Rabbitte raised earlier.

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