Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Callaghan for bringing this Bill before the House. It is undoubtedly a comprehensive Bill and while we will not oppose it on Second Stage, there are a number of points in it that may benefit from further consideration on Committee Stage.

Establishing the parole board on a statutory basis has been a policy objective for some time and it is therefore not something the Government wishes to oppose in principle. I have publicly stated that I had intended to develop and bring forward legislative proposals providing for a statutory parole board and the commitment was in the 2016 Fine Gael manifesto earlier this year. The draft legislation which my Department had been working on was intended to set out the board's functions, powers and structure. As with the Bill before the House, the objective was a more effective and streamlined parole process which, while being of benefit to the prisoner, will always have public safety as a paramount concern.

I wish to give some background to this issue. As long ago as December 2000, the then Taoiseach informed Dáil Éireann of the Government's intention to bring forward legislation to establish a parole board. In 2001, one of my predecessors as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O'Donoghue, established the parole board on an administrative basis. It was envisaged at that time that the non-statutory board would operate for a number of years, with a view to the board gaining experience prior to being placed on a statutory footing.

The penal policy review group, which was established in 2012, produced a report accepted by the previous Government recommending establishing the parole board on an independent statutory basis. The previous Government agreed, in principle, to proceed with the implementation of that recommendation. So we are agreed on the broad principle of establishing the parole board in a statutory basis. The Law Reform Commission agrees with this proposal and the former Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality under the chairmanship of the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, in its report of March 2013 made the same recommendation.

As it is currently constituted, the function of the parole board is to advise the Minister for Justice and Equality on the administration of sentences of persons whose cases have been referred to the board. The board informs the Minister of the prisoner's progress to date, the degree to which the prisoner has engaged with the various therapeutic services and how best to proceed with the future administration of the sentence. The focus is very much on the rehabilitation of prisoners and getting offenders to the stage where they are ready to integrate into society without posing a danger and having served an appropriate period of imprisonment. The Minister considers in full all recommendations when making the final decision on sentence management. Where temporary release is recommended, the board also advises the Minister of the conditions which should attach to any such release.

I acknowledge that this Private Members' Bill is well drafted and intended to address the long-standing policy objective of an independent parole board. I will refer to a number of issues in the time available to me.

Section 7 sets out the functions of the parole board and provides that the board shall, if appropriate, direct prisoners to be released on parole and, where necessary, also determine that such parole orders be suspended or revoked. As it stands, the power to release prisoners early is vested solely in the Minister for Justice and Equality. Section 23 of the Criminal Justice Act 1951 allows the Government to exercise the power to commute or remit conferred by Article 13.6 of the Constitution on the President - except for capital cases - and in turn delegates that power to the Minister for Justice and Equality.

Legal advice obtained in the context of my Department's ongoing work on its own parole Bill has raised considerable doubt as to whether the Government's power to remit sentences in a parole system could, at a constitutional level, be devolved. We need to have discussions on whether it could be devolved in full to an independent parole board and the implication of this for the proposals in the Bill would need to be carefully considered. It was something that had arisen in the preparation of our legislation in the area. We have not reached a final conclusion on that but no doubt it would be a point of discussion.

While not directly related, if the power to release prisoners convicted of our most serious offences is to be transferred to a body not accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas, should consideration be given, for example, to setting out a minimum period of imprisonment to be served in the case of a sentence of life imprisonment? Implicitly, the Bill imposes a minimum period of imprisonment to be served in the case of life sentence prisoners in so far as the Bill follows the existing administrative procedure whereby review for parole arises after seven years have been served. In practice under the existing administrative arrangements, this initial review is simply the start of a process to prepare a prisoner for potential eventual release and there may be a number of reviews before a person is released.

The reference in the existing non-statutory process to a review after seven years has led to concerns among victims' families. I agree with the points made by both previous speakers. In line with the victims' directive, we need to provide for the perspective of victims' families and other relevant people in granting parole. That has probably not received adequate consideration over the years and needs to be far more central now. If we include that now in primary legislation without addressing these matters it could not only aggravate matters for victims' families but may also lead to the new parole board having to justify in court why a life-sentenced prisoner is not being released after seven years.

The Bill also proposes that the parole process would take on a more legalistic, quasi-judicial hue, which may conflict with the intended rehabilitative role of the board. The thrust of the Bill is that the new parole board would decide if and when a prisoner would be released. It does not put much emphasis on looking at the future administration of the sentence, which often falls short of release and involves recommendations about different forms of therapeutic interventions, attending particular work and education programmes and so on. That role of the parole board should remain and I imagine that Deputy O'Callaghan would have little difficulty with that.

The Bill proposes that the chairperson should be a person who is, or has been, a judge of the Circuit Court or of the superior Courts, that person being nominated by the Chief Justice. Currently, the chair of the parole board is a solicitor. Further, existing arrangements provide for four members of the parole board who would be described as community representatives. It is important to have strong lay representation on a board to bring the perspective of the layperson as opposed to somebody immersed in the legal or judicial system in these decisions. In essence, section 11 provides that these community representatives will be replaced by lawyers appointed through a competitive process. It provides that these four members be appointed as panel convenors who must either have held office as a judge of the District or Circuit Court, or be a practising barrister or solicitor. We need to discuss the appropriate membership carefully because I am very conscious of the risk assessments involved when making these kinds of decisions and the interplay of expertise needed. Having said that, my experience is that the risk assessments are given a lot of consideration within the Prison Service and in the Probation Service.

I do not have much time to go into the detail of some of the other points I would like to make. Section 16 provides that a person whose parole is being considered is entitled to appear, give evidence and make submissions to the panel; attend while a person other than the victim is making a submission; be represented by a solicitor or, with the permission of the panel, by counsel; and have a character witness in attendance.

I will make the point in summary that this is very different from the situation at present. While written legal representation can form part of a dossier, no legal representation is allowed at the interview stage or when the case is considered by the full board. I have no doubt that in some circumstances, it would be appropriate for a prisoner to have access to legal aid. I would be concerned if the parole process were to take on the attributes of an adversarial system in full. Obviously, that would lead to a significant charge on the Exchequer. In addition, it could do away with some of the benefits of the existing parole process. I think we need to consider and tease out these issues.

At present, there is no such thing as a parole order along the lines of the order proposed under section 21. Recommendations from the Parole Board are made to the Minister, who decides on each case on the basis of the board's recommendation. The Minister's power to release derives from the Criminal Justice Act 1960, which provides for all temporary release. At present, this mechanism is used for releasing prisoners on a full-term basis and is often termed "full temporary release" or "reviewable temporary release". As things stand, neither the Parole Board nor indeed the term "parole" exists in statute. That is precisely the point the Deputy is making.

I have a number of points to make on sections 22 and 26 and I will communicate directly with the Deputy in that regard. I would welcome clarity on the provisions of section 23, which provides for the Parole Board to monitor a person's compliance with his or her conditions of parole. Currently, a person who has been released is subject to monitoring by the Probation Service. It would be interesting to hear whether it is intended that this role will transfer to the Parole Board. The Probation Service is doing some very effective monitoring work at present. Obviously, it is critical and important that there is ongoing monitoring and feedback to the Prison Service and the Minister in cases when very difficult decisions are being made about releases. That information needs to be transferred in a very timely way. The Probation Service has had very good experience of doing this over the years.

While I have raised a number of issues regarding this legislation, I acknowledge that it is consistent in principle with my party's policy and with long-standing Government policy. I thank Deputy O'Callaghan again for introducing this Bill. We should have further discussions on the various issues that have been raised. I will conclude by acknowledging the work of the current Parole Board, its chairman, John Costello, and all the members of the board, who give sterling service on difficult assessments and cases.

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