Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Wallace has made several very important points which go to the heart of certain ethical and practical issues relating to these proposals. With no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, it is a disgrace that the Minister, Deputy Alan Shatter, is not in the Chamber for this debate. In fact, it is unprecedented for the lead Minister not to be present for the introduction of a Bill. The Minister has lauded his actions in bringing forward this legislation and posed as very much a reforming Minister, yet he could not be bothered to be here this morning. That is extremely regrettable.

All sides of the House have welcomed the fact that we are talking about moving to a situation in which people would not go to prison to serve short sentences. That is a good thing but it should not lull us into blindly accepting this legislation as a step in the right direction. For all the reasons highlighted by Deputy Wallace, it is not a step in the right direction. It is a step from one failed policy to what will be another failed policy.

I know that the real Minister, or the big Minister, or whatever one wants to call him, moves in circles of people with deep pockets but subliminally this Bill tells people that if they have the ability to pay, they have a licence to do whatever they like, they will never face the ignominy of going to prison or the possibility of having to do community service to atone for what they have done. They can pay their way out of anything. That is the wrong message to give in any society. It is particularly offensive in respect of certain crimes. Unfortunately, the court system is adopting this approach more often. A report published after Christmas about the amount of money collected by the courts showed that a quarter of all the money collected in court fines was collected in County Kerry. The Judiciary there obviously has a tactic of not sending people to prison but of fining them instead. That has led in part to many of the local and community groups relying on the money from the court system and the word going out that one can pay one's way out of anything. Earlier this year a District Court judge in Dublin gave a 21-year-old medical student, who had pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend, no record. He was allowed to walk free from the court on condition that he paid €5,000 to Women's Aid and the Simon Community. That raises a couple of problems, it sends out the signal that one can pay one's way out of sexual assault and get away with it yet people from a disadvantaged background, who do not have the ability to pay, get a record for a much lesser offence. That cannot be. There are problems about organisations such as Women's Aid, which do important work, having to rely on such donations. That is somewhat contradictory. It is not in any way appropriate that people who would be guilty of such crimes would be allowed to pay fines in that way.

One of the worst aspects of this is the information given by Deputy Wallace on the number of people in prison through crimes of poverty. A financial penalty will not work for those people. Last week we visited Margaretta D'Arcy and another elderly citizen in Limerick Prison, both serving short prison sentences. They told us about the types of people in prison with them. Their stories are no different from those in any other prisons. The majority are young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the women's prison the same group of young women come in cycles of short sentences. Invariably, they have children at home and their family life is disrupted. Many of those are in for crimes of poverty, crimes linked to drugs and so on. How would they pay a fine? If one is in for shoplifting does one have to shoplift even more to pay the fine? It does not make any sense. If we were to spend a fraction of the money we spend on prisons, on giving people an education and a decent standard of living we would be much better off.

It is good not to send people to prison to serve short sentences. That is a ridiculous thing to do. We are way out of kilter with other countries but we must be very careful about the message we send out. It is twofold: if one is rich can pay one's way out of anything and do whatever one likes, but if one is disadvantaged that situation will not change. Unless we learn the lesson from that and start to deal with inequality in our society we will not be any closer to the reformed and equitable type of society to which I would aspire.

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