Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 7, between lines 15 and 16, to insert the following: “(6) The Minister shall, within one year of the passing of this Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas, and the relevant committee, evaluating the effectiveness of the system for recording warnings issued by the Garda Síochána pursuant to subsection (1).”.

We discussed this issue at considerable length during a number of sessions of pre-legislative scrutiny. We also discussed it on Second Stage and we discussed it on Committee Stage. The issue at stake is that in order to commit an offence under this legislation, a person has to have received a prior warning. That means that a person could protest outside a premises in, for example, Galway and may get a warning from the Garda and, a day later, a week later or a month later, he or she could protest outside a premises in Dublin and be apprehended by a garda, but that garda would have no way of establishing the fact that he or she had received a prior warning. Therefore, and as I said earlier, I have yet to be convinced that this legislation is actually workable, and the last thing we want is to pass legislation in this House and to discover in a few months' time that there is no way of operating that legislation.

The Minister has stated on a number of occasions that there is no national system in place to record prior warnings. We have talked about people protesting outside a polling station, for example, and then going up the road to another polling station. In such circumstances, generally, locally, gardaí would be aware of those people. If such a protest were to happen in one part of the country and, following that, in another part of the country, where would the communication within the Garda be? I am still waiting for an explanation, from a person in the Department, from the Garda or from the Minister, as to how exactly this system will operate. I cannot get my head around it. It would bring the legislation and the Government into disrepute if this were to be unworkable legislation, and that is my fear. Most of us do not want to find ourselves in such a situation, whereby there is no way of recording prior warnings. How, then, will the Minister implement this legislation? It is a very unusual situation whereby a prior warning is required in order to constitute an offence. I was trying to think whether there is any other area of law where a prior warning is required, and I am not aware there is.

My fear is that this legislation would be unworkable. I certainly hope that that will not be the case. The reason I have tabled this amendment is that we need to ensure we have a system that works. Nobody can outline what that system is at this point, and for that reason I say that, within a 12-month period, the Government should be required to lay a report before the House on the operation of this aspect of the legislation. This is not just a standard review. Many of us call for reviews after a year, two years or three years on the operation of legislation. It is not a general review I am talking about; it is a specific review of the effectiveness of the system for recording warnings, a system which the Minister tells us does not exist at this point.

Effectively, he is saying the legislation is not workable at this point and that, perhaps at some point in the future, it will be workable. The last thing we want is for an unworkable system to continue to be in place and for it to take some time before that is discussed again in this House or at committee.

On Committee Stage the Minister gave an undertaking that he would look at this and would come back with an amendment of his own. He has come back with an amendment, amendment No. 4, and that is about a review of the operation of the Act. He said earlier that he was meeting us halfway. I was looking for 12 months and other members were looking for 24 months and the Minister is saying that he is meeting us halfway and is talking about 18 months. The Minister is not actually talking about 18 months because the first part, part (a), of his amendment, reads “not later than 18 months after the commencement of this section, commence a review of the operation of this Act and [there is a part (b) - (a) is the review – which reads] as soon as practicable after the completion of the review, prepare a report, in writing, of the findings of the review”. What does "as soon as practicable" mean? That concerns me because that is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. The Minister is saying the review will be done within 18 months and, as soon as practicable, a report will be produced. That is why I am concerned about the timescale the Minister is talking about here. I do not think it is adequate and it is important because we need to have a very clear focus on the specific element of this amendment where we are talking about the need to review and get a report on the recording of the prior warning. That is the element we need reviewed.

It is fine to have a review of the general legislation and the operation of that after two or three years or whatever, but I am saying it is important we have a specific review of this element the legislation and that we do it within a 12-month period to keep a focus on that element of the legislation and, indeed, to keep pressure on the Garda to ensure we get to a point where we have a system in place, but that system is yet to be determined.

See this speech in context