Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is correct in saying that Fianna Fáil will be introducing legislation seeking to give effect to what I outlined earlier, that is to say, providing legal aid to a victim of sexual assault or rape at an early stage at the time he or she makes the complaint. We should bear in mind that the accused gets legal aid from the time the complaint is made. There should be a similar structure of to provide support to victims of such crimes. We believe it is important that they be provided with legal aid at an early stage as well as legal representation in certain limited circumstances.

We should recognise, however, that no matter what changes we make to our legal system, there will always be a difficulty when we have two conflicting accounts of what occurred on a particular occasion. If one person states that there was consent and another person states that there was not consent, we will always have a difficulty unless we have extraneous evidence corroborating one side or the other. No matter what system we have, it will always be difficult to determine where fault lies or if fault arises when we have two conflicting accounts in respect of consent. In any event, that should not deter us from trying to come up with new measures that will provide support to victims so that they can make a complaint in the knowledge of what will happen. No one could complain if we had a fair and supportive system that allowed a complainant to make a complaint and that allowed the process of justice then to take its course.

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