Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and I compliment Deputy Calleary on bringing it forward. I was delighted to hear the Minister promise he will bring in his own Bill which will go further in some areas while being restrictive in other areas. As Deputy Jonathan O'Brien said, we should consider the community service legislation which was recently discussed in the House, in particular, the sensible proposal in regard to the 12-month period whereby a judge must consider community service rather than over-crowding the prisons by sending people to prison when their sentences would be better served in the community.

Lack of legislation in this area means that people with criminal records face barriers to employment, travel restrictions and difficulty in taking out mortgages and in many other areas of life. The list of areas included in the Bill is too restrictive. As Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan said, a person would be barred from becoming a traffic warden or undertaking any form of State employment. Those who have committed crimes of sexual nature would have to live with that, particularly if they are dealing with sensitive areas such as the care of children or other people. Such people have to go through a rigorous Garda vetting process at present, an area which is still too unwieldy and lacking in detailed knowledge, thereby allowing some people to slip through the process.

The barriers to successful integration and rehabilitation into our society is the area on which we must focus. Goodness knows, society has enough problems and serious offences will obviously not be included in order that there is no threat to public safety. We must always take cognisance of this but we must aim to get the person back into society through restorative justice. No matter what happened when a person was young, in the fullness of time, when the person has matured fully and wants to play a part in public service or service to the community, he or she should be allowed to do so and should not have this blemish on his or her character for ever more. As I said, serious offences such as sex offences are an exception to this and none of us wants to change that.

Before the Minister, Deputy Shatter, introduces his Bill, he should align it with the community service Bill to create a level playing field, encourage fairness and responsibility, encourage citizens to play a meaningful part in society and give them an opportunity to display the fact they made a mistake, paid a price and are willing, ready and able to play any part they may be required to play in everyday society. I hope there could be cross-party agreement in this regard. Given the Minister said he was in favour of many aspects of the Bill before us, I hope the Government side will not oppose it. If he must bring in his own amendments, he should do so and we will get the best of the views of all parties in rectifying the Bill.

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