Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 8, to delete lines 3 to 7 and substitute the following:

“ “9B.(a) Where an application for bail is made or renewed by a person charged with an offence, a court shall give reasons for its decision to grant or refuse the application including reasons for a decision to impose or vary any conditions to be contained in the recognisance to be entered into by the person.

(b) Upon request, the court shall give reasons in writing for its decision to grant or refuse the application including reasons for a decision to impose or vary any conditions to be contained in the recognisance to be entered into by the person.”.

This amendment is similar to Deputy Jonathan O'Brien's amendment No. 7. It deals with decisions around bail being set out in writing. This is a matter which we discussed in committee and there are a number of very important reasons that this would be done. First, there is the whole issue of transparency and promoting public confidence in the system. At present it is sometimes difficult for the public, and even for victims in many instances, to understand why bail decisions are being taken. Therefore, having those decisions available in writing would help the public to understand, as well as making the courts less opaque.

Obliging judges to give their reasons in writing, if requested, will also, we hope, help to promote consistency in decisions around the granting or refusal of bail, or indeed around the imposition of various conditions in that regard. If we want to understand the current use of bail and to begin to research compliance with conditions, the likelihood of breaches and so on, having the information provided in writing by the court is very important. Similarly, if we want to encourage a more select use of remand in place of bail, it is essential that information on the reasons for bail decisions should be publicly available.

My preference was, as indicated in Deputy Jonathan O'Brien's amendment, to require and oblige judges to give their reasons in writing in all instances. However, I was conscious of the points made by the Minister and Deputy O'Callaghan on Committee Stage that, given the number of bail applications, if we were to do that, the judge would not be able to do anything else other than write out the reports around these decisions, which could be used to delay the system.

Therefore, as a compromise I proposed this amendment where a judge, if asked, must give the reasons in writing. It would improve the system. Obviously, if we do not require it in all instances we may lose a potential nugget of information that we would get if we had them in all cases. I accept at the moment it is probably not practicable to have it in all instances.

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