Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I hope I will get injury time for all this.

I will explain to the Minister how the system works. He is the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. He makes propositions and explains them to the House. He should not ask the Opposition to invent its own laws so he can scrutinise them. When we move to the Government benches, we will make the law and he can comment on it. As and from today, and for the next couple of weeks, he will get to make a few proposals and we will scrutinise them. That is how the system works and if he does not mind, he should please answer my question on electronic tagging. Does his contention on Committee Stage last May that the system does not work in the presence of low clouds, high buildings and high trees still pertain or has there been a technological breakthrough, such that the form of electronic tagging he, rather than the Opposition, is now proposing now works? Is he committing public funds to it, bearing in mind that he told the committee he was unwilling to do so last year? Are we still waiting for the technology to improve, as he told the committee last year? Is he including the provision on the Statute Book in the hope the system will be improved and costs will come down? I expect him to refer to this in his conclusion.

Consider the sentencing provisions under Part 3. Section 24 provides for certain scheduled offences. The court must impose at least three quarters of the maximum sentence allowed for those offences as long as they fall into certain categories. This applies where the person has previously been convicted for a scheduled offence and sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment and where the offence was committed within seven years of a previous conviction. The individual in question must be over 18. I have given this much careful thought and find I am not at odds with the Minister in respect of it. We both start from the same position. I certainly do not like the American system, where there is a prescriptive legislature that outlines the parameters within which the judiciary must operate.

I admit that ten years ago I opposed mandatory sentencing because I believed the Judiciary should consider every case individually and, by and large, I felt it was doing a good job. I have changed my view on that, however, with the upsurge in violent crime. It is necessary to send a clear message to those who might perpetrate such crime that there is an inescapable consequence if they are caught.

I have a horror, however, of the American system of three strikes and you are out.

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