Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am contributing to this debate on behalf of my colleague, Deputy O'Callaghan. Fianna Fáil supports the Bill. I respect what the Minister of State is trying to do, namely, create a more stringent sentencing regime for repeat offenders. There is a concern, as the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Affairs, Deputy Doherty, indicated, regarding the leniency of sentences that have been handed down. However, we must also listen to some of the points that have been made. I will address them in a moment.

Members of the public are rightfully disgusted and angered by some of the headlines they see whereby victims are devastated by the lenient sentences we see. This Bill seeks to address this to some degree. As Deputy Wallace mentioned, however, in section 4 of the Bill a kind of complex scheme is proposed and then it is also stated that there is full judicial discretion which would cancel out the intent of the Bill. Will the Minister of State - or perhaps the Minister for Justice and Equality if he returns to the Chamber - indicate what else is the Government doing to address properly the sentencing issue? We obviously have an issue in this regard, but we would like to see the Government address its failure to establish a sentencing commission. This would address the huge inconsistencies we see handed down in many cases of this nature. In April 2018, Ms Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh described the lack of sentencing guidelines as somewhat bizarre. She specifically pointed to the fact that while there was a lot of authority as to general sentencing principles, there was very little in the way of actual figures to guide her in these decisions. In 2013, my party published a Bill to establish a judicial sentencing commission that would prepare proper sentencing guidelines. Other parties have, I believe, published similar Bills.

Despite the Government paying lip-service in many instances, it has repeatedly failed to progress that legislation. I would like clarity from the Minister on the contradiction in section 4. We are supporting the Bill but I would like to hear more from Government regarding what it plans to do about a sentencing commission and addressing this in a more wholehearted way because that would address some of the concerns the Judiciary has mentioned in its statements.

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