Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I am interested in the Minister's view on it. The former Attorney General calls them "crime prevention orders". The point is they are very vague in the structure of the Bill. What is the Minister's view on that? We need to address that because if there is a lack of guidance, what impact will that have on their constitutionality?

I feel crime prevention orders are good as a mechanism to deal with the situation. We talked about having post-release conditionality on the last occasion we dealt with the legislation. The notion we can have conditionality linked to early release, such that people will be debarred from certain areas at certain times for a certain period of time is good. However, I would have liked more time to think the issues through and to ensure it was presented more clearly and understood more fully.

The first amendment in my name looks innocuous and seeks to delete the word "an" and insert the words "a civil" in line 20 of page 21. The Bill reads: "the court shall consider whether to make an order ... ". I suggest this should be changed to "a civil order". I suggest this in order to replicate the language of the ASBO legislation and make it clear that it is a civil order of the nature of an injunction rather than a punishment. This is what we did in the case of ASBOs to make it clear that an additional punishment was not being given to an individual.

In passing, some members of the Law Library already call these crime prevention orders "super ASBOs".

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