Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

The amendment applies to politically motivated offences which are covered by and occurred before the Good Friday Agreement. I point out that in the context of this Road Transport Bill we are talking about very serious offences. We are not talking about membership of the IRA. Somebody convicted for membership of the IRA is not precluded from holding a haulage licence nor is somebody who threw stones or petrol bombs at the RUC or somebody who defended his or her community. The kinds of offences we are talking about here are very serious ones. They are offences like rape, money laundering, drug smuggling, murder and armed robbery. I am not sure if one could ever describe those kinds of offences as being politically motivated ones.

The principle that has been established to date is that people convicted of these offences who were members of paramilitary organisations whose campaign is at an end can be put on early release. They are put on early release under licence, there is no amnesty, convictions are not expunged and they are still convicted criminals. That is the current legal situation. It is possible, under this legislation, for somebody to go to the District Court and make his or her case as to why he or she should still have a licence.

I appreciate where Deputies are coming from. There is a case for saying that what is in the past is in the past and the time has now come to draw a line under what occurred in the past. If there is an appropriate way to do that, it should be done perhaps by a spent convictions Bill. We have a Bill already enacted that states that convictions that were made a certain period ago, particularly minor convictions, are considered to be spent so that somebody's record is clear, or perhaps there could be an amnesty Bill. If this issue is to be pursued, it should be pursued in that way perhaps in the form of a Private Members' Bill that would give an amnesty or consider these convictions to be spent. This is a Road Transport Bill and I do not believe this is the place to address that issue. If that issue was addressed, it would only be addressed in this Bill. It would not apply, for example, to taxi licences or other areas the likes of which were raised yesterday.

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