Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I take the point that Deputy Howlin is making. The Deputy and I, along with many others, worked hard over many months at the committee chaired by Deputy Peter Power to develop an agenda for reforming the child protection law. In that context, we appreciated that the law would have to be restated. It is hard to pull it all together because it is spread over a pile of difficult and obscure statutes. Our consideration of the sexual abuse of children must form part of a broader consideration of sexual abuse among adults. We really need a restatement of our law in relation to sexual offences generally. It should also be stated and acknowledged that the law on sexual offences is complex. There are moral, judgment and value issues to be considered and also gender and sexual orientation issues which are sensitive. There is no point in codding ourselves about all these issues. It is not an easy area of law to deal with and if it was easy, doubtless we would have had significant reforming Acts. I refer to the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act and legislation relating to fraud and theft offences which are significant codifying statutes. However, this is a difficult area.

Last Friday I was informed that it was to be welcomed that the House would address the issue of section 6 of the 1993 Act but as the Deputies have seen, dealing with it has been slightly more complex than was then thought; if it was to be made an indictable offence, there were certain consequences and certain other knock-on effects of changing the law which had to be dealt with. Last Friday, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe tabled a Private Member's Bill on an issue which was of immediate relevance to many people — the issue of grooming. I could have allowed Deputy Jim O'Keeffe proceed with his Bill and then I could ignore it while dealing with the narrow issue. If I had done so, this would have been a very unsatisfactory evening because we would have been like trains on different tracks, talking about the same issue but never meeting and with no meeting of minds. My officials and I looked at the Fine Gael Private Members' Bill. We saw it had been careful not to trespass on to the more controversial areas of grooming which must await the more comprehensive legislation. It had taken what I believe to be an improving but careful approach which most people would say was a desirable improvement in the law and which would give confidence that something was being done about people who planned to prey sexually on young people. We decided that rather than have an inconclusive debate in which the Fine Gael Bill would be accepted by the Government and then fall into limbo, we should try and give it the impetus of enactment if possible. I have taken the spirit of the Labour Party Bill and the substance of the Fine Gael Bill and done my best to make sure the two are dealt with in this measure. I have done this on the basis that I wanted to unite the House.

I fully accept and agree with what Deputy Howlin is canvassing, namely that all this underlines the proposition that a comprehensive new sexual offences law is needed. I advance the second proposition that we also need to clear up this issue of the absolute zone of protection because legislating in this area without clearing this issue up will be deeply unsatisfactory, for all the reasons canvassed in Deputy Peter Power's committee.

The Deputy raises the point that it was too clever by half to propose an amendment to the Constitution allowing for an absolute zone of protection without stipulating in advance what the Government's view about the age of consent should be. This is an issue on which I respectfully beg to differ from him. It is possible for this House and after a general election it is possible for the newly-elected Members of this House later this year to decide where they want to be on that issue.

See this speech in context