Mae Sexton (Longford-Roscommon, Progressive Democrats)

I will share time with Deputy Fiona O'Malley.

Like my colleagues, I welcome this Bill and congratulate the Minister on the introduction of legislation to ensure that gangland bosses will no longer have handed down to them derisory and inadequate sentences. Modern Ireland has seen an unacceptable increase in gangland activity, resulting in 26 gangland murders in 2006. I fully and unequivocally support this Bill as I believe it strengthens the hands of the Garda and the DPP. It is timely that criminals should fear our criminal justice system. The current situation has been brought about by the failure of the Judiciary to ensure that these dangerous criminals receive punishment commensurate with their crime.

The murder of Veronica Guerin saw a massive public outcry and demands for justice, to which the Judiciary responded. That response has now weakened and the Judiciary has reverted to a softly, softly approach to crime and to the punishment of same. Judges talk of proportionality in sentencing. Where is the proportionality in the case of a gangland boss, who is responsible for numerous deaths, walking away with a suspended sentence for drug crime? It seems that the scales of justice have been tilted so far in favour of the accused that they are about to fall over. I, therefore, take this opportunity to raise a matter of grave concern to the people of this State.

I am of Longford, and not far from here, at the main entrance to Trinity College, is situated a commemorative bust to a very famous Longford man, Oliver Goldsmith. Indeed, a summer school to celebrate his life and work takes place annually in Ballymahon. In 1770, Goldsmith's best known poem, "The Deserted Village" was published. Prior to its publication, in a letter to his friend Joshua Reynolds outlining the intended social comment of the poem, he wrote: "In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me". In the poem, Goldsmith's declares: "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Goldsmith's words are perhaps even more relevant in the Ireland of the Celtic tiger than 250 years ago. No doubt, the accumulation, display and obsession with wealth is all too obvious. We must ask ourselves whether our society is one in which "men decay". For me, the greatest single indicator of societal decay is the lack of social justice, which still exists in important areas of our society.

I take this opportunity to speak on one such social injustice. On 12 March 2007, a man convicted of a brutal and shocking rape walked free from the court in which he was tried. Adam Keane left the Central Criminal Court, effectively a free man, leaving in his wake a woman devastated in body and soul, her dignity and integrity in tatters and her quality of life destroyed forever. Is this the quality of justice that Mary Shannon from Clare deserves? The precedents are clear and unequivocal. In the DPP v. M in 1994 it was decreed a sentence should be proportional to the gravity of the offence and the personal circumstances of the offender. While temporary or permanent insanity could be deemed to be a mitigating personal circumstance, a self-induced state of intoxication or drug-driven delirium surely cannot be deemed such. On the specific crime of rape, the DPP v. Tiernan in 1989 is specific. This judgment from the Supreme Court handed down by the then Chief Justice, Mr. Finlay, stated that save in exceptional circumstances a person convicted of rape should receive an immediate and substantial custodial sentence. He also stated he would find it hard to see a situation that would justify departure from this principle. As was the case here and as it should be from now on the convicted rapist is the one on whom the onus to appeal the severity of the sentence should fall. This creates a binding precedent for all courts in respect of rape.

The contemptible submission of Mr. Justice Carney that the NY case decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal, subordinate to the Supreme Court, should be a precedent in the sentencing of the crime of rape is reprehensible and unacceptable.

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