Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will move that amendment tomorrow night during the voting block. I thank the Ceann Comhairle. That is useful. I will speak to the amendment in any case, if I may.

It is important to stress that the motion is not about the Special Criminal Court, or renewing or confirming the existence of that court. As we all know, that court was established on foot of a Government proclamation in 1972 and will continue in being regardless of how we vote on the motion or any amendments to it. The motion is about the need for annual renewal of some important changes made to the Offences Against the State Act in 1998. The Minister has described the context for those changes.

Most of those changes created new offences or new rules of evidence. Along with other Labour representatives in this House and the Seanad, I have spoken previously about the need to change our practices in respect of many of these provisions. There should be no need for an annual vote on some of these provisions. They should be part of our permanent criminal code. For example, the offence of directing an unlawful organisation should be a crime rather than being regarded as an emergency provision. On the same basis, withholding information about the commission of a crime should be a permanent offence. It is long past time for the Department to extract from the 1998 Act and this annual renewal process the provisions of the Act that are used in practice, that are effective and that should really be enacted in permanent form.

The focus of our amendment is our problem with section 14 of the Act, which we are also being asked to renew for a further year. This declares that, in respect of each of the offences under the Act, the ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice. If the motion is passed, as I presume it will be, for a further 12 months, without examining the circumstances of any individual case, all prosecutions for any of those offences can only be by way of non-jury trial before the Special Criminal Court. It is that prospect of the blanket referral of all such prosecutions that we are targeting with this amendment.

We also need to see a proper review of this legislation. Annual renewal debates in this House and the Seanad to date have generally been cursory and lacking in information. We welcomed the appointment of the independent review group. I note that, in her speech, the Minister said she is preparing a substantive response to that review, but the review reported in May 2023, which was some time ago now. The report of Mr. Justice Michael Peart's group confirms the position adopted by the Labour Party. It is frustrating that the core recommendations have not yet been acted on. The core recommendation endorsed by the Peart review in 2023 was, as we are all aware, also made much earlier, in 2002, in the Hederman review. The Oireachtas was called upon to repeal the existing Acts and to replace them with one single consolidated item of legislation containing significant reforms. The Peart review's minority report went further and recommended the abolition of the Special Criminal Court. The majority report supported its retention but also recommended, as do we in the Labour Party, that there should be no blanket referral of offences to a non-jury court and that instead the DPP should use the power she already has to decide on a case-by-case basis whether there is a sufficient threat to the administration of justice to justify sending a particular trial to that court. Page 12 of the report says:

The current system of “scheduled offences”, under which certain offences are automatically or presumptively tried by a non-jury court, should be abolished. Instead, the decision as to whether a non-jury court is used should, in every instance, be based on an assessment of the circumstances pertaining to the particular case.

The offence would remain in place and be triable in the ordinary way and the DPP would retain her discretion to transfer any particular trial to the Special Criminal Court.

Of course, the review group also recommended many other reforms and safeguards. We need a more substantive debate on the recommendations in that report beyond the very short and curtailed debate we have tonight. We also need an opportunity to interrogate the Government's position on its recommendations. We will support the Sinn Féin amendment on that basis. However, if our amendment were to be passed tomorrow, the Special Criminal Court would remain in being and the offences created would remain part of criminal law but prosecutions would not automatically be referred to the Special Criminal Court. As I have said, that is the issue.

In the brief time I have left, I will address another issue relating to this motion that I have raised in the Seanad before. It is also addressed in our amendment. In that amendment, we refer to:

the absence of sufficient information to support an informed finding as to the adequacy or otherwise of the ordinary courts to secure the effective administration of justice and the preservation of public peace and order in relation to offences under the Act

I have raised the lack of adequate information before. Every year, the Dáil and the Seanad are asked to declare, in a somewhat perfunctory way, that the ordinary criminal courts are inadequate and that our treasured and highly valued principle of jury trial is somehow not fit to deal with particular offences. This somewhat pro formadecision of the two Houses on the adequacy of the ordinary courts should be based on more evidence than we have ever been provided with when asked to make this declaration. The declaration amounts to a legislative finding but insufficient information has been provided to Members of the two Houses on foot of which to make such a finding. We should not be making this finding without that information. In particular, we have not been given any information as to the adequacy of the criminal courts or the risk of corruption or intimidation of jurors. It is also on that basis that we are bringing forward our amendment. We ask for a more substantive debate on the Peart review in this House and in the other House because this annual renewal debate is no substitute for that fuller and more informed debate.

See this speech in context