Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

This is an extremely important Bill. The Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Barry Andrews, will be more aware than many of his colleagues of the principle in the criminal justice system that ignorance of the law is no defence. However, that is difficult to explain in the circumstances outlined by my colleagues and when the Government admits that the law in respect of defence of the home is a grey area. There is a lack of logic to some of the interpretations that have been made of the law.

This Bill has two simple aims. First, it achieves legal certainty and brings fairness and clarity. Second, it allows people to have peace of mind in their own homes. This is particularly important, as has been pointed out, for the elderly and for people who live in isolated areas but it is broader than that. Many people, both in urban and rural areas, are concerned about the practicalities of how they can defend their homes and their families and they are entitled to peace of mind.

There has been much reference to the Law Reform Commission. I suppose it is pertinent to state that the Law Reform Commission has appealed for clarity on this aspect of the law. The Law Reform Commission report states:

A failure to specify rules of acceptable conduct clearly exposes accused persons to "the vagaries of juries" and "to gusts of public opinion".

Therefore, the Law Reform Commission agrees with Fine Gael that there is a need for clarity in this area.

There has been much confusion about why this legislation is required and I heard some dangerously emotive language from the Government benches. Fine Gael is not stating, contrary to what some colleagues of the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews have suggested, that people should be entitled to shoot to kill. That is not what we advocate. Fine Gael advocates that we balance the rights of innocence people - victims in their homes - with the rights that already pertain to intruders in the home, and that is important to point out.

Both the criminal law and the civil law are confusing in this area. We hope and strive to achieve a degree of clarity. We have already pointed out that there is a constitutional issue. The Constitution has not been done justice via legislation. The Constitution refers, in Article 40.5, to the inviolability of the dwelling but that has not been transposed into legislation which protects that constitutional right.

The following question arises. Who has rights, victims or perpetrators? The Constitution provides protections to people in a range of circumstances and the focus is often on the rights of the accused - the rights of those who have been arrested such as the right to fair trial - but we should not forget that it is not just criminals who have rights. The Constitution bestows rights on all of us, particularly law-abiding citizens, and protects all of us. It is the duty of the Legislature, and particularly the Government, to ensure that the most basic right, the right to sleep soundly at night in our own homes, is protected. That is a matter on which the Government, and particularly the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, needs to focus and reflect.

In criminal law, for example, the presumption of reasonableness currently lies with the perpetrator and we in Fine Gael consider this unfair. We propose, in section 3 of the Bill:

Where the occupier of a dwelling uses force in relation to a trespasser who is unlawfully present, and remains within the dwelling, the force used by the occupier shall, unless the contrary is proven, be presumed to have been reasonable.

We are not proposing a shoot-to-kill Bill. What we are proposing is simply to shift the burden of proof from the innocence party to the guilty perpetrator, the person who is uninvited and intruding in somebody's home.

See this speech in context