Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

In accordance with the exclusive given to Jerome Reilly, the Minister announced at Thursday's press conference that "in the spring" — it is not clear whether this is the spring of 2009, 2010 or 2011- he would present to the Dáil a Bill to reform the victim impact statement mechanism in order to grant some status to next of kin in homicide cases. He made other announcements which essentially boiled down to continuing the current life of the Commission for the Support of Victims of Crime as a non-statutory body and promised the creation of a victims of crime consultative forum representing victims' interests to liaise with the commission and presumably to describe to the commission all the difficulties currently experienced by victims of crime which require redress and which are comprehensively dealt with in the Bill before the House.

The hasty last minute announcement on Thursday of the creation of a victims of crime consultative forum was simply a re-announcement of a proposal contained in An Agreed Programme for Government published in June 2007 and a repeat of the content of an interview given by the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Brian Lenihan, to RTE on 15 June 2007 and of the content of a speech delivered by him on 17 July 2007 to the Magill Summer School in Glenties. Interestingly, on that occasion, the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, stated that "one of my first acts as Minister was to direct that we should move ahead as quickly as possible to get a Victims Support Agency up and running". Apparently the agency that he directed should move ahead as "quickly as possible" in June or July 2007, the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, has now re-announced as a promise to be implemented some time in 2009 or later. Sadly, yet again, the Government manipulated well-meaning reporters who knew nothing of the history of this issue into making bogus presentations of new ministerial initiatives, writing editorials in praise of the Minister and misleading the public into believing something meaningful was taking place for the benefit of victims of crime.

The truth is that the Bill before the Dáil contains the provisions necessary to address the difficulties currently experienced by bereaved family members following a homicide and fully meets the specifics of what the Minister promised to do in the Sunday Independent. The truth is it provides for the statutory establishment of the Commission for the Support of Victims of Crime with far greater powers than are vested in the current commission. The truth is that the Fine Gael legislation before the House is substantially more detailed than that promised by the Minister and provides the comprehensive rights-based law to which victims of crime are entitled.

The sad and pathetic truth is that the Minister, for reasons best known to himself, feared that his stature or importance was being in some way threatened or diminished by a major piece of legislation coming before the Dáil addressing an area that falls within his ministerial brief. The tragedy is the Minister lacked the vision and insight to realise that accepting, in principle, the Fine Gael Bill and in the autumn, as we had suggested, introducing amendments that he considered appropriate and necessary, would have increased and not diminished his stature. The truth is that for reasons of party political rivalry and personal ego, the Minister intends to block the progress of this Bill. For his own selfish reasons, therefore, he intends to prolong the suffering of families of homicide victims by refusing them the opportunity to have their say in court, something to which he feigned a commitment in the so-called "exclusive" three weekends ago in the Sunday Independent.

Regrettably, on Thursday afternoon last, the Minister chose to engage in the worst type of petty and small-minded politics, behaviour which should be below the dignity of a Minister or any official attached to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Having been informed by me that some sections of the Bill reflected New Zealand legislation, the Minister arranged for journalists to be widely briefed that I had simply plagiarised a New Zealand Act and had in some way engaged in improper conduct. The Minister carried what was an intended smear into a debate with me on LMFM on Friday morning last. Subsequently, his handlers similarly briefed the Sunday newspapers.

The Minister knows that in the preparation of legislation by Government, it is best practice to examine similar legislation operating in other parts of the world and to enact into Irish law legislation working well elsewhere in a form designed to address the State's particular needs and problems. This approach is adopted not only by his Department but by every Department, by the Attorney General's office and by the Law Reform Commission. The latter has, in its multiplicity of reports, regularly surveyed legislation in existence across the world and proposed the enactment of similar appropriate legislation in this State. The Minister and his departmental handlers have been touting victims' rights legislation from New Zealand and expressing hostility to Fine Gael's Bill because it reflects some provisions in New Zealand law, as if New Zealand is some alien state with which we have nothing in common and which forms part of the axis of evil.

It is a particular personal irony that when first working on victims' rights legislation in 2001, I visited New Zealand in September of that year with members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights subsequent to its completion of Committee Stage of the Children Act 2001. We made the trip because some of the provisions contained in that Act, as piloted by the Government, replicated legislation already in existence in New Zealand which was working reasonably well. It was the committee's considered view that it would be helpful to visit New Zealand for briefings from Government officials, and we were encouraged to do so by the then Minister of State with special responsibility for children, Deputy Hanafin, who was the lead Minister on the Bill. We went there to discover how Zealand's children's laws were working in practice and to feed this information into the new administrative arrangements and children's services required to implement our new Act. Ironically, it was on this visit that I was briefed on the laws then in place in New Zealand relating to victims of crime and on new legislation being enacted by the New Zealand Parliament to update those laws.

The then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, was clear on the Government's approach to the Children Bill enacted in 2001. Speaking in the Dáil on 12 April 2000, he stated:

It took almost two and a half years to bring a new Bill before the House. There were sound reasons for that. First, we had to learn from international best practice how best to proceed. In that regard, the then Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Fahey, went to New Zealand to examine the situation there. He and his officials studied it in great depth and reported back to me. I was satisfied on hearing their report that amendments were required.

The amendments to which he refers were those to the original Bill as published. Prior to that, in May 1999, the then Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, described to the House in reply to a Dáil question how he spent 12 days in New Zealand being briefed on different aspects of juvenile law. He was accompanied on that visit by a principal officer from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and an assistant principal officer from the Department of Health and Children.

Curiously, it was appropriate for the Fianna Fáil-PD Government to enact legislation in 2001 based on New Zealand's laws and for a joint Oireachtas committee to visit New Zealand to be briefed on the operation of that legislation. Yet, according to the Minister, Deputy Ahern, it is plagiarism for a Fine Gael Bill to take account of some aspects of New Zealand law that are working well in an area in respect of which there is no existing Irish legislation.

See this speech in context