Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

This will be the subject matter of debate in the context of the forthcoming general election. The negative views, for instance, that the Green Party and Sinn Féin have to much of this material should be played out in public. Groups like the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, and perhaps the Irish Human Rights Commission may well have difficulties with the Hogan report, even though the Hogan group consulted with them. There is a public debate on many of these issues.

My view is entirely coincident with the view of Deputies Howlin and Jim O'Keeffe. It is not sustainable in this day and age that if a person gets away with a crime, so to speak, and there is compelling evidence afterwards which was not available at the time the person was acquitted that he or she is the guilty party, and the crime is of such seriousness as to require revisiting, one should simply state that is a question of double jeopardy or autrefois acquit and there is no issue to be gone into. It is interesting that the European Convention on Human Rights — it is in the report, in the passage referred to by Deputy O'Keeffe — specifically deals with this territory. It is also of significance that Ireland is increasingly out of kilter with common law consensus on this issue in having the old system where if a person is acquitted that is the end of the matter.

I agree completely with Deputy Howlin. First, it could have a general deterrent effect that people would know even if they did get away with it, and they were clever on the day, had clever lawyers and intimidated people and whatever, that in the end there were other people who could, by delivering an envelop into the DPP one day, have them back behind bars, and that accomplices could pull the plug on people at a later stage. That is a compelling argument for change in the law on this area, as is the sheer question of public faith in the entire judicial system. For instance, if somebody in a Myra Hindley type case were to be acquitted, and if it were subsequently to emerge that there was a video tape of them doing whatever they did and if there was incontrovertible evidence that their acquittal was mistaken, it would outrage public opinion that they would be able to walk free. Although I do not want to get into too much detail, there is the spectacle in America of persons writing books about how they could have committed the murder if they had committed the murder of which they were acquitted. That process, too, is deeply subversive of public confidence in the administration of justice.

Ireland should join the international consensus and qualify the principle, which was a cornerstone when I was studying law, of the sanctity of double jeopardy. We can and should qualify that principle.

The issue with which I am confronted this morning by this amendment being tendered is that I am being asked to do something which I am being condemned for doing in other contexts. I am being asked to make a radical change when there has not been debate.

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