Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this legislation. In recent years, we have come to a much better understanding of the nature of and enormous damage done by sex offenders. After decades of weak or ineffective legislation, we have incrementally moved to strengthen our laws and to develop supports for victims. It is an ongoing process as our understanding and knowledge deepens and we still have a long way to go, particularly in providing proper supports.

Building a legal framework is critically important, but building a community support is more important than anything else. The network of rape crisis centres now available is an invaluable resource. In my home town of Wexford, there is a brand new rape crisis centre funded by Government that is about to be officially opened. It is an invaluable resource and has great voluntary and professional support groups. As society learns more about things that were unsaid and undone, unnoticed and unacted upon in the past, we have a greater understanding of things now.

The depressing array of reports and investigations of sexual abuse cast an ugly light on Irish society over many decades. It has taken us a long time to come to terms with the way we were and, of course, the way we still are in many instances because it is a process of education. We learned about the institutional abuse in State sponsored, if not State run, institutions, and how generations of Irish people were horrendously abused. We learned of ongoing abuse in the domestic setting, which was a taboo area for decades. What went on within the family setting was to be uncommented upon and was certainly not to be interfered with. Women in particular suffered terrible abuse. One of the most striking events I recall from my experience as a Deputy was relatively early on when I was visited in one of my clinics in County Wexford by a woman in her sixties who had the first conversation she had ever had with anybody. She felt she could come and talk. She told me that her life had been a torment, that she had been abused by her husband for decades and had reared a family whose children abused her in turn because that was the pattern. These were shocking things that often went unreported in our society for a very long time.

There are different types of abuse now. There is online abuse where lives are destroyed by the commentary made online. I thank the Minister for her and her Department's very strong support for Coco's law, which I was pleased to introduce some years ago, that was eventually passed through the Oireachtas with the support of all Deputies in this House and was enacted into law of the land. That was an important bulwark in itself, but was only yet another brick in the wall we need to build to protect people.

We need to have rape crisis centres and make them accessible. We need to make counselling available, which is not always available, in a timely fashion to people. We need to have helplines available for all vulnerable people - men and women - who need to reach out to somebody to be able to have that conversation which has been suppressed, often for years if not decades. I truly believe that the Minister has a deep understanding of these issues and is determined to make a substantial difference. Labour Party Members, from our benches, will strongly support her in that endeavour.

The establishment of a sex offenders register in 2001 was a most important measure, although its initial version needed very substantial improvement. It was a written register - literally a ledger - in its first iteration, with extraordinarily limited effectiveness. It was the idea of having a register which people understood they could check somebody's past record. Deputies have said that sex offenders are different. They are different in a number of ways. Usually, when someone is convicted of a crime, the courts pass an appropriate sentence. Once that sentence is served, that person is free to rejoin society in an completely open way.

We have to regard sex offenders differently because we have to protect people from reoffending. Deputy Daly made a very strong point with regard to the number of people who are in prison, having been convicted of what are sometimes very serious sexual offences, and who refuse, as they are entitled to, to engage in any form of treatment or support. They are often still in denial, even after a court case and conviction, and lack an appreciation or understanding of the nature of the harm they have inflicted. I do not have a solution to that. I do not know how a requirement for some form of mandatory treatment could be introduced. However, it is a fact that, statistically, sex offenders are at a real risk of reoffending after release. It is for that reason we established a sex offenders register 20 years ago and that such offenders are required to be subject to ongoing monitoring and so on.

I would be interested in a proper briefing on the effectiveness of the current register at some stage. I was dismayed to hear how ineffective its original iteration was. However, it continues to be an important measure. We need to improve it. In the legislation before the House, the Minister has set out a number of significant improvements to an array of legislation in light of our deepening understanding of sex offenders and sex offences. The requirement to notify An Garda Síochána of a change of address within three days rather than the existing seven days is important. There is merit to it even on the basis of putting it in sync with what happens in the United Kingdom. That is a good thing in and of itself. Three days is a reasonable period of time. If anybody who is on the sex offenders register is going to be in a different place for longer than that, he or she will be required to notify An Garda Síochána of his or her new locale to allow for monitoring and an understanding of the situation.

In respect of the specific powers to allow courts to prohibit sex offenders from working with children and vulnerable adults, I agree with other Deputies who have spoken. It is a surprising addition at this stage. One would have imagined it would have been open to the courts to make such a determination in the past rather than only requiring that an employer or potential employer be informed of the offence record of an individual who might potentially have access to vulnerable people or children. I strongly welcome the coming into effect of this provision.

Specific powers for An Garda Síochána to take fingerprints, palm prints and photographs to confirm identity is also something one would have imagined was already there. Is such a provision not available under general criminal legislation in any event? If it needs to be made specific and strengthened in this Bill, I will strongly support it.

There will also be specific authorisation to disclose information about a sexual offender in limited circumstances. This is something we have to consider because it is a difficult and fraught area. Anyone who has looked at the international experience will understand why. We certainly do not want vigilantism. We have seen a case in Wales where someone with a similar name to an offender became the focus of public ire and, worse, public violence. There is a balance to be struck. It is to be hoped sex offenders who have been through treatment and the prison system can be rehabilitated. They cannot be excluded from all society forevermore. There would be heightened concern if there was to be general access to the register. In many societies the right to know is enshrined in law, particularly in individual states of the United States. What happens is that either the individuals involved go underground and create an alternative persona for themselves, which is illegal and puts them outside the law again, or they simply cannot live because of the focus upon them. These are very difficult areas because the countervailing point is that, if you were raising your family and an especially grievous sex offender was moving onto your street or next to you, by God you would want to know. You would think you had the right to know and would be dismayed at not knowing. As I have said, I do not have an answer for that.

The formula of words the Minister has used in setting out these provisions limits their use to exceptional circumstances where there is a potential to do harm to prevent that harm, but we need to tease out exactly what that means and in what circumstances they apply because we have seen individual cases in the United Kingdom in very recent times where members of the police force took photographs and released them, which did terrible harm to the family of a victim of crime. It is something the Minister has obviously given a great deal of consideration to but I would like to hear about the specific international analysis that has been done, what is best practice internationally and how we can arrive at a balance that ensures people can have a right to know while making it possible for released prisoners who have served their sentences to have some life and existence.

Specific teams have been established for some time. I refer to the sex offender risk assessment and management, SORAM, teams consisting of gardaí, Probation Service personnel, Tusla officers and, as the Minister has indicated, perhaps even Housing Authority personnel. Again, we might consider this matter and have some conversation about it. Obviously, these teams have to manage and consider risk, but we need to know who is making those evaluations and how that is being done. We need to ensure some level of consistency across the jurisdiction in respect of these matters because each group established will consist of different individuals who may have different perspectives. We need to have standard guidelines, understandings and monitoring to ensure they operate well. I am conscious they are already operating but we are now giving them legislative underpinning. In that legislative underpinning, we might also want to ensure consistency, objectivity and oversight of the decision-making process and the specific decisions arrived at. I make that point now.

The discharge or variation of a sex offender order is provided for in the legislation before the House. This is again something that has merit. The Minister spoke about youth offenders having an automatic right of discharge after a period of time. Very grievous harms have been done by individuals who are under 18 and therefore children under our legislation. We have seen that in other jurisdictions as well. The overarching principle that must underpin this legislation, and all legislation in this area, is the prevention of further harm. As I have said, we cannot impose permanent preventative custody. I am not suggesting that for a second, but when sex offender orders are discharged or varied, this must be done following criteria we understand and in a consistent way.

There is now co-ordination among the courts, with the new courts bodies that were set up to ensure there is consistency in that regard. There should be the power to vary an order over time where a person has demonstrably changed. Particularly where an offence happens when someone is very young, there has to be a possibility of his or her rehabilitation and of getting on with life. I imagine once someone is registered as a sex offender, his or her life chances and opportunities to move and live in society generally are rather restricted. I support that, therefore, but if it is in a way that is better explained as to how it will operate and be managed.

Finally, the issue of the electronic monitoring of sex offenders is something we have talked about for a long time, since the 2001 Act was enacted. I recall a technical briefing many years ago on the deficiencies in electronic monitoring, but I wonder how much the technology has advanced. One of the previous speakers commented we have not spent any money on ICT in An Garda Síochána in recent times, but I sincerely hope we have because I allocated €220 million to it. Unless somebody was spending that money on something else, I hope the ICT system within An Garda Síochána has been greatly improved over the past five or six years, although there is much more to be done. I refer in particular to the specifics of electronic tagging. I recall a view presented by experts who appeared before an Oireachtas committee on justice many years ago regarding the limitations of electronic tagging in terms of geography, where they indicated it was not foolproof. Have those technical limitations been overcome and is there now an effective tagging system? If so, that is something that should be deployed an awful lot more.

These are just some of the points I wanted to make on this Stage regarding the intentions of the Minister and what has been set out in what I regard as a series of significant improvements to the panoply of our laws to protect citizens, especially people we have not been good at protecting over decades in our State. Obviously, all this has to be against the backdrop of the protection of the innocent. I can think of no more serious crime than rape or sexual abuse.

Equally, I can think of no more serious charge if the accused were innocent. We have to strike that balance always because we have come across such cases. Once someone has been accused of a crime in this area, it is probably impossible to get on with life. The accused is fatally wounded as a person and that is why we have to be so careful in crafting legislation in this area, with the overarching aim to protect the most vulnerable, whom we have significantly failed in the past. We need a deepening of our understanding of the types of hurt and harm done by sexual offenders in all sorts of settings, such as in domestic circumstances, in relationships and online. As best we can as legislators, we must shape an appropriate, and always evolving, legislative landscape to protect them.

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