Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 2016 I raised the question of our bail laws in this House when I told the Taoiseach's predecessor how more than 250,000 offences had been committed in Ireland in the previous ten years by people who were out on bail at the time. The only element that has changed since is the numbers have gone up. In the decade from 2011 to 2020, offenders out on bail were found responsible by a court for a staggering total of 261,427 crimes. They include 84 homicides and almost 9,000 threats to murder or seriously assault, with more than 4,000 robberies, 16,000 burglaries and 65,000 thefts. Of course, these figures only relate to those offenders who were caught and convicted in courts and do not include what may be thousands of more serious offences where nobody was charged or convicted.

Last year alone, people already on bail in respect of other charges accounted for one in every six crimes where there was a court conviction. It is a shocking statistic that these people were responsible for one in every five murders and 25% of people convicted of explosive or firearms offences were also on bail at the time, as were 16% of those convicted of robbery, extortion and hijacking offences. More than 1,200 burglars - again, these are just those who were caught - were out on bail when they decided to wreak havoc on other people's lives.

In total, more than 30,000 people convicted of a criminal offence in the Irish courts last year were offenders out on bail, and that was during a global pandemic, when overall crime figures were down. It is clear something must be done about easy access to bail for serial offenders who have no hesitation in leaving court and going out on the street to inflict further trauma, injury or worse on others. It is obvious the rules governing the granting of bail to repeat offenders are not protecting members of the public from suffering further harm at the hands of these people.

The Taoiseach might tell me that changes have been made since I raised the matter in 2016, with the bail laws tightened through the Criminal Justice Act 2017, but the evidence of the effectiveness of the measures suggests otherwise. The number of offenders committing crimes while on bail has increased since the beginning of the previous decade. In 2011, the numbers were fewer than 25,000 but last year, as I stated, they have increased to more than 30,000. In the year before that, the number was well over 31,000.

Will the Taoiseach undertake to further strengthen the laws governing the granting of bail to people charged with serious offences, making real changes in order to protect the law-abiding citizens of our country?

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