Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's Department highlighted problems with this legislation 13 years ago. It has taken us this long to get this far. Is the Minister honestly telling me we are going to see amending legislation when there is a problem with what we are enacting now? We will not. The Minister is telling us the Garda is saying it is happy with what is in this Bill. I have been at this for 13 years and I can tell the Minister that gardaí throughout the country enforcing these measures now are saying that a coach-and-four is being driven through this scheme by having this flexibility built into it. They are saying this because it will be used and it will be exploited.

Compliance is not high in this regard. The Garda identifies 70 breaches of this legislation annually where sex offenders are not found at the addresses they have specified and listed. I reiterate there are 70 breaches annually, on average. This has been happening for the past two decades in this regard because the system, as it is structured, puts all the cards in the hands of the sex offenders. This has left gardaí in a situation where their hands have been tied behind their backs. We are now asking gardaí in different parts of the country to try to track down these individuals and ensure they comply with what is very worthily set out in this legislation, without the members of the force even knowing what these offenders look like. I say this because, as the legislation is written, to comply with the law a sex offender can present himself or herself at a Garda station in Wexford and then reside in the most isolated parts of Roscommon or Galway in the west. It will then be the responsibility of the local gardaí in the west to try to figure out exactly where this person lives and ensure he or she complies with the law without even knowing what this person looks like.

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