Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"calls on the Government to support the immediate establishment by the House of the Select Committee on Justice and for the first items of business on the agenda to be the taking of Committee Stage of the following Bills: - Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018 [Seanad]; and

- Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill 2017; and that this should occur no later than 31st October, 2020."

This is an unusual motion to be debating in Private Members' time. It is not the Second Reading of a Bill or a motion on a particular issue. Rather, it is an instruction or at least a request regarding a committee of the House. The first part of the request is that the committee be established expeditiously. That formed part of the Ceann Comhairle's work earlier this evening and I hope, therefore, that the first part of the request is in train. The second part of the resolution is to ask the committee to take Committee Stage of a particular Bill, namely, the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018, as a priority. I heartily commend Deputy Naughten and his colleagues in the Regional Independent Group on their statement, by way of this motion, that this is an important Bill. As every speaker thus far has argued, it most certainly is an important piece of legislation. I join others in commending former Senator Pádraig Ó Céidigh on the work he did in putting it forward.

The last Oireachtas was an unusual one in that a lot of Private Members' legislation was brought forward. Unfortunately, much of it did not progress to enactment. In fact, more than 200 Bills were introduced by Members, availing of the new facility we had to do so because the Government was a minority one and could not kill off every piece of legislation at birth. That allowed individual Members a real capacity, for the first time, to bring forward legislation. Very meaningful legislation was debated and some of it reached conclusion. One such Bill, which was not enacted, was the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018. We have heard very eloquent testimony from a range of people as to why this Bill should be enacted. It came as a surprise to many of us to realise that the act of perjury is not a statutory offence. It is quite extraordinary that this would be the case. I assumed it was a statutory offence and I agree that it certainly should be. For all the reasons laid out by other speakers, I think it will be done, by way of the speedy enactment of this Bill.

I have tabled an amendment to the motion and I am asking for the indulgence of the Regional Independent Group in so doing. My purpose is not to dislodge the priority this House should give to the Bill which the colleagues from that group have rightly placed on the agenda, but to ask them to allow me to request that in addition to their Bill, the new committee would also take as a priority another really important piece of legislation, namely, the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill. This, too, is a Bill that has been going around for some time since I introduced it in the last Dáil, in 2018. It is a fundamentally important piece of legislation which seeks to address a situation that is affecting thousands of people every day in our communities, particularly younger people, and causes an extraordinary degree of unseen hurt and harm. I refer to online bullying, which is so intense in some instances that it is leading people, especially young people, to suicide. It includes the issue of so-called revenge porn and the incredible harm that is being done in that regard. Our existing legislation is hopelessly inadequate and hopelessly outdated when it comes to dealing with these matters.

I made a commitment to the family of the late Nicole Fox Fenlon, known as Coco to her family, a young woman who was bullied so badly that she took her own life. She suffered from a campaign of online bullying that was unrelenting, but her situation is not unique. The same thing is happening to people all over the country right now. Nicole's mother, Jackie Fox, has been an extraordinary champion for the enactment of legislation that would, as our Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill seeks to do, modernise the law and thereby protect precious children like her beloved Coco. One of the commitments I made to Jackie is that before the Bill is enacted, we would include a reference to "Coco's law" in the Long Title in memory of the beautiful daughter she lost. As I said, there are many others suffering as Nicole did. I have been contacted by scores if not hundreds of individuals who have endured and are enduring incredible hardship because of online bullying and because there is no way of stopping it. We need to make the online platforms accountable. We need robust laws that will make them remove harmful and hurtful communications and postings. We need to be able to follow through, in the strictest legal terms, on actions against those who are carrying out this incredibly harmful activity.

Without doing any harm at all to the primary and understandable objective of the Regional Group in putting forward this motion, I am seeking in my amendment to add the Labour Party Bill to the priority list of the new committee. I hope both Bills can be enacted before the end of this year. I understand that is the commitment the new Minister, Deputy McEntee, has given. I acknowledge not only her supportive words in regard to both Bills tonight but also in the meeting I had with her, where she gave me a firm commitment that the legislation that is on the Order Paper in my name and those of my Labour Party colleagues would be enacted speedily. It is unfortunate that both Bills did not fully progress in the last Oireachtas. In the case of the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018, it had passed all Stages in the Seanad and was on the verge of enactment, but it fell with the falling of the last Oireachtas. It is good that we can restore both Bills at the Stage they left off and put both of them directly into committee. A lot of work has been done in the Department of Justice and Equality on both Bills. The proposed amendments to both are ready to be submitted and we can do an enormously positive thing by getting these two important Bills enacted.

Finally, colleagues referred to the impact of the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018 on the insurance business. The Bill is a very important part of a suite of measures we need to introduce to reform the punitive charges being imposed on all sectors, not just motorists, who were particularly instanced tonight, but also small businesses and many others trying to do business in this country.

We need a robust analysis of the insurance business. The former Minister of State, Michael D'Arcy, had done an enormous amount of work in this area and we need to complete it for him. Part of that work is the enactment of the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018, which it is hoped will happen as quickly as possible. I hope my colleagues and friends in the Regional Group understand my reasoning in trying to advance my own Bill as well as theirs and that they will allow the amendment to be passed in order that both Bills are enacted speedily. I ask the House to support the amendment.

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