Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss specifically amendments Nos. 35 to 37, inclusive, in response to the Minister's comments on her amendment No. 35. It is a rather strange provision in the legislation that the Minister is proposing that a conviction cannot be considered spent until after seven years, which is a change from the Bill as published and discussed previously. This is only being done to facilitate the road traffic Acts, and I cannot get my head around that. The original Bill as proposed had a table of different types of convictions, reference to the terms "custodial" and "non-custodial", and how long a person had to wait until their conviction was considered spent. That was a reasonable way of trying to deal with it whereas this blanket ban of seven years seems to be draconian for people who, under the previous Bill, would have been able to have a conviction of six months spent within a couple of years and could have applied to have that classed as a spent conviction. Now they must wait for seven years and that does not seem to me to be proportionate or reasonable in terms of dealing with them.

The Minister is also proposing that any number of road traffic convictions can be considered spent after the seven years but yet for other convictions only one conviction can be considered spent.

It creates different classes of offenders. Take, for example, a young person aged between 18 and 20 who goes off the rails slightly in terms of drinking or a drug habit and falls foul of the law. It might take the person a year or two to work through their problems, during which time he or she might accumulate a number of convictions, perhaps two three-month sentences. We are telling such people they can have only one spent conviction and that they can never lift this burden. Ten, 15 or 20 years down the line they could be totally reformed, have families and be contributing members of society, and we are telling them the mistakes they made will be carried with them for the rest of their lives simply because they can have only one spent conviction.

There is absolutely no value in somebody with multiple convictions even considering spent convictions because it just does not make any sense. What we are actually saying is people from communities with deprivation, large drug problems, poverty or exclusion who end up falling foul of the law will be treated differently from somebody from a comfortable middle-class family who becomes a bit of a boy racer and ends up running up a number of traffic offences. He can have any amount of such convictions disregarded through spent convictions, but somebody from a marginalised community cannot. This does not make sense. It is not proportionate and it is not fair. I do not see why we would even consider it.

Going back to what we were discussing earlier, on the initial matrix in the legislation, surely it was within the remit or capabilities of the Department to state a driving offence could not be spent while the person in question was serving a ban. Surely this could have been included in the legislation rather than stating there must a blanket seven years for everybody. The Minister stated nuances are possible with regard to children and working with children, whereby offences must be disclosed for jobs with children but not for other jobs. It is possible to do this within the legislation.

This is a backwards step. It does a disservice to the many people who have convictions from years ago hanging around their necks which they will never be able to have spent. We have had presentations in the audio-visual room from English groups working on spent convictions. A young person who falls foul of the law will accumulate a number of convictions over a period of time, perhaps 18 months or two years, during which they go off the rails, and we are telling them they will never be considered as having the conviction spent. We are telling them they cannot participate in employment. Much has been made by the Government about how it is keeping the recovery going and getting people back to work. What we are saying to these people is no matter how they reform their lives and how much they put themselves back together and get back on track, we will not recognise it in the State. For this reason, I oppose the amendments.

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