Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I know, that is why I am not at odds with this proposal. The notion that people who commit a minor offence face life imprisonment without parole is horrific.

We must tread carefully. I do not oppose the Minister's suggestions, particularly on crime prevention orders, which are an extremely valuable development. I would like time on Committee Stage to find out the Minister's thinking on this, there might be instances where I would be more draconian. The idea that the perpetrator of a vicious sexual offence should be barred from approaching the victim after release might be considered instead of a timeframe, although there may be constitutional considerations in a timeframe.

Post-release conditions, however, are a good development and serve the view of victims who have been excluded from the criminal justice perspective for a long time. Once a victim presents him or herself to the gardaí, the prosecutorial system takes over and he or she is a mere witness in the court. We saw an horrific case lately where the victim had to travel to court on the same train as the accused, who was later found guilty but was also able to share the train back on the way home. That would not be dealt with by these provisions but the notion that we can assign orders that are binding on individuals who have served a sentence so it is understood there are other social requirements for those who have perpetrated heinous acts is welcome. I hope we have time to develop this on Committee Stage.

I will not have much time to develop Part 4, the inference to be drawn in certain circumstances. Perhaps it is as well to deal with that on Committee Stage but I do not have any difficulty in the broad stroke of what the Minister is suggesting.

In his own contribution, the Minister touched upon the issue of inserting in Part 5 the mandatory minimum sentence to be imposed on individuals convicted of a first offence for the possession of drugs with a value exceeding €500,000. We could debate the figure chosen but the issue of concern to me is that a threshold sends the message out that below that threshold is not serious. Talking about this might send a signal to the Judiciary but we may need to include something in the section that states notwithstanding this mandatory requirement of the Oireachtas, it is not to be taken that we regard anything below this as less than serious. It is difficult to strike a balance in this area but I share the concerns about it.

Judicial conduct has fallen off the agenda since the Minister's predecessor's proposal for a referendum. We must return to that because it is a better way to go than to corral judges into a certain way of behaving. Much work has been done on it and we must debate it.

There are important issues to be debated in this Bill and I support the bulk of them. I want, however, the time and space to do my job by giving it proper and careful scrutiny so that when we enact legislation, it is good legislation where we have achieved our objectives and where we have not made mistakes.

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