Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

While the Labour Party broadly welcomes this legislation, as our spokesperson on justice, Deputy Howlin, and my colleague, Deputy Broughan, have indicated, is it wise to rush justice legislation in this manner? Given the propensity of the Minister and despite his incredible brain — not only is he able to do Crosaire but he can swallow a thesaurus — like many brainy people he is wrong more often than many of us lesser brains. Notwithstanding our concern that the Bill is rushed, the Opposition parties give it a cautious welcome, although we do not know where some of its provisions will lead.

Section 7 appears to remove existing requirements that a Garda witness should be able to give a court a reason for his or her opinion regarding the refusal of bail; instead, Garda opinion will automatically be accepted as fact. While I am not convinced that this will be the outworking of the section, it appears the provision will result in the Garda rather than the court deciding on bail. This is innovative in terms of the administration of justice.

The Labour Party broadly welcomes section 10. It is difficult to determine whether section 13 on electronic tagging is genuinely innovative or pursues the Minister's agenda of privatisation. Studies in the United Kingdom have shown that, rather like a mobile telephone, the GPS signal emitted by the tag will be weak when cloud cover is low or the area in question has poor coverage or high buildings. It has also been discovered in the UK that the tagging companies must remove the tag on the night before the person on bail appears in court. As a consequence the person may slip down to the local pub and get jarred, thereby breaching bail conditions. The experience of electronic tagging in the UK does not inspire massive confidence but the measure is nevertheless appropriate. I ask the Minister, who is not familiar with the concept of humility, to regard it as experiential. Let us wait to see how it works.

On mandatory sentencing, murder or manslaughter results in the death of a person, while the brutal rape of a man or woman often brings to an end the victim's emotional life for years or even permanently. It is important, therefore, that judges take a strict view that these types of crimes must be punished by appropriate sentences. While it is appropriate to take into account the background of the perpetrator and any mitigating circumstances leading to the offence, murder or manslaughter destroys someone's life while a brutal rape or assault destroys the victim's emotional life. There is more than one way to kill a person. Some people have been left walking around like zombies by what has been done to them and judges need to mark this. None the less, this issue needs to be dealt with carefully.

The most unfortunate aspect of the Minister's tenure in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has been his complete failure to get the message on community policing.

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