Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

It is bizarre that at this stage of the year we are dealing with this issue regarding the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, given the warnings from those of us in Opposition and from the DPP himself about cuts in the Estimate for the running costs of his office last year. Society must make a choice about investing in the justice system. It is welcome that we are ensuring the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions continues to operate properly until the end of the year. However, it says much about the budgetary system and the absolute failures in the Minister's budget last year to take account of what is happening in the justice field.

While I was not present when the Minister gave his opening address on this matter, I have since read it. He has said that there have been savings by the DPP. However, he had no choice because otherwise he would have been in the position of seeking additional moneys in May. The Minister and his officials failed to take account of what was happening in the justice area if they miscalculated by €4 million the cost of running the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It has been plain for anyone to see that the courts are bogged down by more and more complex cases. The more complex they get the costlier they will get and the more time consuming they will be. Obviously it is important that justice is seen to be done and that every angle is covered.

The DPP is in a very difficult position. There is often a demand by the public for cases to get to court more quickly. The dangers of that have been seen time and again in the past year and in previous years, in that court cases are collapsing. When a court case collapses I presume legal counsel gets paid in full, even with the 8% reduction the Minister has quoted here. It is a difficult game for the DPP to juggle money. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions should always have the required sums, but it should be backed up by the changes required in terms of ensuring that the justice Vote as a whole - even though this one comes under the Department of the Taoiseach - deals with savings. If the money were invested in the probation and welfare service we could save millions if not tens of millions of euro every year by diverting people in larger numbers away from the prisons to community service and similar programmes through which offenders would be seen to pay their dues to society.

Obviously there is also a need to save money by avoiding circumstances where barristers - or solicitors at the very least - judges, those who are charged and witnesses all turn up in court only for the case to be adjourned because the material is not ready or there is some other delay. There needs to be greater co-ordination between the prosecution and defence to ensure a court case goes ahead on the scheduled date and that additional cost is not heaped upon the DPP owing to mistimed court cases.

The cuts in the Estimate for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions last year and the cuts in Garda overtime, the blocking of promotions in the Garda Síochána and the recruitment ban all add up to major problems in the justice system in the foreseeable future. In addition there is the difficulty that the forensic science laboratory has not gone ahead. The only thing that has gone ahead - this says much about Irish society under the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Governments - is the privatisation of justice and public private partnerships. I heard mention earlier of the glass box at the entrance to the Phoenix Park. The development of the courts complex is to be welcomed and I welcomed it at the time when we debated it. However, the problem is that it is under the PPP system just as the Government proposed for the prison complex at Thornton Hall. That is the legacy.

It is interesting that this comes about through a saving of €4 million from the Department of the Taoiseach's group of Votes. I wonder where those savings were made. I did not notice the Taoiseach mention that he had a spare €4 million floating around in his Vote that he could spend on anything. Many schools that require special needs classes etc. would like to have heard that earlier so they could ask the Taoiseach to divert that money to those causes rather than to the DPP. However, as the DPP needs this money, I am not arguing against it and will not vote against it. It is an absolute failure with regard to the forecasting of figures if, for such a small Vote as that of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Minister got it so wrong.

I presume that, prior to the budget last year, the DPP made submissions to the Minister that he would have a certain amount of costs for the period 2009-10 and that he had already pared back on costs and tried to save, as we know from previous years. Yet, in his wisdom, the Minister last year introduced a cut. We are now dealing with a major crisis because if the DPP's office did not get this €4 million, matters would slow to a halt until the new year or until the budget was saved.

I do not believe there is any opposition to this Estimate. It simply shows the need for much more time and effort to be put into forecasting the exact cost of the court cases the DPP is preparing. We know in advance approximately how many court cases the DPP will present next year because cases are usually taken a year after the arrests, given the time it takes to get to court. The prediction would be simple to make. The Minister mentioned two cases which collapsed and then ran on for a combined total of 116 days, but, while they might have been slightly abnormal cases, they would not have been out of synch with previous years. There are often substantial court cases, and future cases will be increasingly complicated as the Garda Síochána and the DPP rely increasingly on forensic evidence in trying to prove a trail of evidence while the criminal gangs try to beat the system and make it more difficult for convictions to be gained.

I urge the Minister, when responding, to deal in particular with the preparation for this year's budget and to take account of the failure to ensure the DPP has sufficient moneys to deal with the workload he and his office will undertake for the period 2010-11. We must ensure we do not have to come back to the House in October or November next with an emergency or Supplementary Estimate just to allow the DPP's office to survive.

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