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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this debate. This report into penal reform and sentencing is a very good report and I hope it does not just gather dust on the shelf of a Department, like other reports. There are very many fine and important recommendations within it that deserve to be acted on and I ask the Minister to read it carefully.

I commend the members of the committee who contributed a significant amount of work to produce the report. In particular, I commend Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who chairs the Committee on Justice and Equality with great diligence and fairness, which is reflected in the fact that the committee works in a politically non-partisan way. This is not the first report the committee has produced. It has produced many other equally useful reports and it will produce more reports soon.

This report could not have been produced without the assistance of the people who came before the committee to give evidence and make submissions in respect of a very complex area of law. In this regard, I acknowledge the role played by the Irish Penal Reform Trust, the Victims Rights Alliance, the Prison Service, the Probation Service, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, the Prison Officers Association and the Simon Communities. They all recognised the complexity of this area, and while each group had its own emphasis and agenda, as they are perfectly entitled to have, the function of politicians and the objective of the committee is to assimilate all these views and present a report that takes into account these conflicting agendas and the conflicting rights that exist in the area of sentencing and penal reform.

The issue of sentencing and penal reform only becomes an operative issue after the commission of a criminal offence, which will necessarily involve the existence of a victim. It is the function of politicians - the committee in this case - to ensure we balance the rights of victims to have the crimes against them investigated and their perpetrators punished with the responsibility of the State to ensure people who are imprisoned are provided with some form of rehabilitation. Society has a function to ensure we do not see penal policy and sentencing as being solely related to punishment, as they clearly are not.

This is a difficult balancing act for politicians to perform but we must seek to take into account all conflicting rights.

There are two aspects to the report - sentencing and penal reform. On sentencing, up to now there has been too much concentration on the sentencing of criminal offences being limited to terms of imprisonment and fines. This is probably the same all over the world. Any statute passed, regardless of its nature, generally has within it a reference to offences that can be committed and subsequent to that will be a section setting out the sentence for the commission of the offence.

If a case can be prosecuted summarily, there is, in general, provision for a short prison sentence and a small fine and if it can be prosecuted on indictment then, there is a longer prison sentence and a larger fine. We need to recognise that the sentencing options available to a court need to be broadened. That obligation rests on the Houses of the Oireachtas but it is also apparent that some sentences could be availed of by courts but they are not. Paragraph 23 of the report notes that, in the context of drugs offences, there should be more extensive use of non-custodial treatment options for offenders. It is also important to note that the court may also order that offenders complete a course of education, instruction or training that will improve their job prospects or social circumstances, facilitate their social rehabilitation or reduce their likelihood of committing further drugs offences.

The report states, correctly, that those options do not seem to be sufficiently utilised in practice. We need to ensure they are utilised more. If it is on the Statute Book and not being utilised enough, then we, as the sole and exclusive lawmakers within the State, have to ensure the laws are amended to make sure it is used as a frequent option. The Minister mentioned the community return scheme, which is also referenced in the report. We need to recognise that the only option should not be that someone is fined or imprisoned. People need to be put on community service and receive the benefit of that.

The other issue is sentencing of youths. It is a tragedy to see a young person aged 15 or 16 before the Children's Court. Many of us can see that unless that child is diverted from the path he or she is on at that stage, inevitably, he or she will end up before the courts for the commission of more serious offences. It is as sure as night follows day. We need to provide further resources for youth diversion projects and to enhance and protect them. Additional resources are also needed to ensure that if a child at a young age is identified on a path towards social misbehaviour, leading inevitably towards criminality, that we as a State and republic try to deter that child from continuing on that path. That is our responsibility and that is not easy. Let us look at how we would react if that child was in a school and he or she had special needs and special requirements. We would devote resources to it. We need to do the same for a child who is identified as being in trouble at an early stage.

When it comes to penal reform, prisons are places for violent offenders and sexual offenders likely to reoffend, recidivist offenders continually committing serious crimes and people who engage in the most foolish acts late at night and do not realise the consequences. Many violent deaths in this country occur as a result of one punch thrown late at night with drink taken. The individual receiving the punch is momentarily concussed, hits his or her head on the ground and dies. That has happened on numerous occasions. Any consultant in Ireland, or in other countries, will identify that the head hitting the ground as the cause of that death.

In such instances, where there is a family, there also has to be a prison sentence. It may be that there should also be a prison sentence for people involved in serious financial crimes as well. I am not trying to provide a list of circumstances where prison is only suitable. We need to recognise, however, that we need to reduce committals to prisons. The Minister, and the report, mentioned that we have relatively low rate of committals in Ireland. The Minister mentioned 78 or 79 per 100,000. I was pleased that, according to the Prison Service report released early this week, there were 9,287 committals in 2017 compared to 15,100 in 2016. That is a significant reduction because of new fines legislation. It does not, unfortunately, appear to have reduced the prison population.

We gone through this charade for many years where if a person is committed to prison for non-payment of a fine, he or she is in and out momentarily. We should not put people in prison for failure to pay fines. We need more innovative measures to deal with that and that was provided for in the 2014 legislation which reformed fines and recovery of payments. We need to recognise that we need to advance our penal reform and, as the report says, when it comes to addiction and mental health that we do not just abandon people in prison. If it was anyone close to us had a serious drug problem, it would not be satisfactory for him or her to just be put on methadone or left to cope with another drug. We need to work to ensure people with mental health and addiction problems in prison are protected. I could go on because it is an interesting topic and a useful report. I ask colleagues to read it and the Minister to give it serious consideration.

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