Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The Minister indicated what he was going to do last week but we have seen the shape of the amendments only in the past couple of days. The Minister proposed to change the sentence from one year to five years, which remarkably changed the character of this issue. Now he is talking about changing the Schedule beyond the removal of "burglary and robbery" to be replaced by "aggravated burglary" to something we do not yet know. I do not know the other delimitations that have been promised. We are on Committee Stage of the Bill and it will be concluded in two hours.

I engaged in this debate, like others, because we wanted to send out a message on gangland crime, but the message must be clear rather than disjointed. We agreed, regarding some of the points I raised last week, that we need to approach the Bill again on issues such as jury intimidation and manifestly unjust acquittal, and I think this matter falls into that category.

It is a lot to ask of the Minister but I request that he not proceed with section 24. We will return to a criminal justice enactment shortly because we have unfinished business, including other issues that have been raised by the Hogan committee and have not been captured by these proposals. We must make this legislation as solid as possible as it would indicate that we are listening not only to opinions in this House but also to external views. This issue is important but it is not mature enough in our thinking to justify it becoming the law of the land a week from now when it passes through the other House. I ask the Minister to park this issue on the basis that there is an understanding of what we seek to achieve. There is a narrow range of offences that are clearly gang-related. Is it possible that a murder with a firearm would be classified as gang-related but a murder with a baseball bat or knife would not? We must think these things through carefully.

The Minister's original press release on this section refers to instances where a person who has been convicted of firearms, drug trafficking or other serious offences reoffends — the two crimes mentioned are firearms and drug trafficking. The Schedule, however, presents a much broader template. It enabled one very distinguished barrister to speak about a serial offender breaking into a school and stealing a rubber. Such an offence would be covered by this, though I cannot imagine a person receiving 12 months imprisonment for such a crime. Notionally, it could happen. We must think about this more carefully if we are to achieve what we want to across the benches, that is, to be coherent, strong, clear and logical. This is an issue we need to return to. I ask that we do not find ourselves compelled to divide on it, though we will be close to that point if the Minister does not accept what I ask and park it as part of the further package.

As the Minister pointed out succinctly in his opening comments, criminal law is a rolling programme, not an event. One cannot simply present a package and expect it to remain sufficient. There will be a rolling programme of modifications required as crime changes and the manipulators of criminal law seek to find loopholes. We must do our best to stay one step ahead.

I know it is a lot to ask of the Minister on the hoof, but I request that he not proceed with this section so we can have clarity on delimiting the offences that will be captured by it and will know exactly what the saver clause that he has mentioned entails. I have only heard of this clause and we have nothing before us to explain how it will be formulated and presented. It would give robustness to the remainder of the Bill if we parked this for inclusion with other serious, important and largely agreed measures that need to be examined when the pressure of the dying days of this Dáil is not on us. We could do this if we were in a normal committee and had weeks, rather than hours, to deal with it.

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