Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Like the Deputy, I do not believe that a prosecutor should demand 18 years or something like that. If the Courts Service developed a corpus of data, it should be open to a prosecutor to draw to the attention of a judge precedents from the Court of Criminal Appeal, as well as the general pattern of sentencing in an area. It should be reasonable to put those points before a judge.

See this speech in context