Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The measures the Minister outlined that are available already to young people are welcome. I do not object to them. I broadly welcome this Bill. We are trying to make it better. We are not outlawing the possibility of a young person's being remanded in custody. We are trying to ensure the State is forced to act and the onus is on it to expedite the trial. If a young person is accused of a very serious crime, the Minister says the Garda might need time to get the evidence. If that young person's liberty has been taken and he or she has been brought before the courts and charged, I should hope the Garda already had a significant body of evidence. All the amendment states is that the person should be brought to trial and, by all means, if the court decides the person's liberty needs to be taken and he or she needs to be detained, that should be done, but recommendation 20 of the Council of Europe 2003 states that young people should be remanded in custody for no longer than six months before the commencement of their trial. This happens in England and Spain, and in Portugal it is three months. There is nothing bizarre, outlandish or revolutionary about what is being done here and it is in compliance with the idea of expediting trials, which we should strive for. The Minister says everybody has a right to an expeditious trial. They do but that does not always happen. Making it unlawful to detain a young person on remand for longer than three months and specifying that in law will help because those cases should be processed more quickly given the age of the young person.

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