Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the time to speak on this Bill. It is a short Bill of 14 pages, with seven Parts and 12 sections. While relatively short, it covers a huge area with amendments to different Acts, including the Immigration Act, the Judicial Council Act 2019 and the Firearms and Offences Act 1990. There are also miscellaneous amendments with which I have no difficulty as they correct typographical errors. The Bill also makes serious amendments to the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 and the Criminal Justice (Mutual Recognition of Custodial Sentences) Act 2003. There is, therefore, a lot of legislation being amended. There is also a superannuation section extending the mandatory retirement age to 62, which I welcome.

I agree with my colleague, Deputy Pringle, however, in relation to the manner in which this has been done. This Courts Civil Law Criminal Law and Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 has been rushed through. The Minister is shaking her head but the Bill has been rushed through. The pre-legislative scrutiny was abridged and there was a briefing from the Department of Justice. I understand Deputy Pringle raised concerns, as did some organisations, but no other Member did so. That is perhaps why the Government thinks the Bill has not been rushed through, but it has.

I thank the researchers in the Library and Research Service for their wonderful documents. Their note of 24 June states it will not address the provisions of the Bill in detail due to the limited time between the Bill's publication and the Second Stage debate. I do not sit on the justice committee, so I am utterly reliant on what the team in the Library and Research Service does, along with my own reading. The services tells us it did not have enough time to go through the legislation. It produced a note on the designation of the UK as a "safe country", which I will come to back to.

It is more than ironic that we are rushing through this Bill and we also have no idea of the detail of the amendments to come because we rushed other legislation through. We had a High Court case and a Supreme Court case, one of which found fault with the level of quantum in the new guidelines that were brought in. I will come to that but we are trying to rectify it in this Bill. The other case relates to the judgment on designating the United Kingdom as a safe country. When the Minister shakes her head, it is difficult for me to continue. She can disagree with me at the end and pick up on the points I make, rather than using the body language she is using because it makes it difficult for me.

I will quote from the judgments, rather than expressing my own opinion on this. It also feeds into a narrative, which I am most unhappy about, that we will increase fines for carriers bringing "bold" people here, not people who are fleeing war and persecution. We are feeding into the narrative, which is very wrong. We are all dealing with it on the ground and it is shocking that the Government is feeding into it. I do not agree with that.

The Government is to come forward with amendments. In the heads of Bill, there was a proposal that barristers would be able to deal with appeal cases after two years. I do not agree with that. I do not know if the Minister is progressing with that proposal. I do not see it mentioned here but I see a whole list of measures she is going to bring forward. It is very difficult to do this type of reading, which is my duty as a parliamentarian, without knowing what amendments are coming through, particularly in relation to safe countries. We have been utterly castigated by the court regarding our failure to empower a Minister to carry out the duty property and examine case by case before we return anyone to a safe country. We have utterly failed to do that and we are now going to do it in July, as my colleague said, by way of amendment. That is not acceptable.

I welcome the proposal to increase the number of judges in the Court of Appeal from 17 to 18. I thank the Library and Research Service again for this information. We are aware that there was a phase 1 and there was supposed to be a phase 2. The Government was supposed to carry out a review of phase 1 in relation to the number of judges. The plan was laid out but there is no context here. We are told the number of judges will increase to 18 because Ms Justice Ann Power has been moved to the Defence Forces inquiry. I wish her all the best but we have no idea about phase 2, which was announced by the Government, of the increase in the number of sitting judges. We have huge delays. Later tonight, Deputy Daly and I and another Deputy will raise the action being taken, most reluctantly, by barristers. I can say that as someone who does not have a conflict of interest because I left the profession, if one can ever leave it, in 2016. Barristers are being forced tonight to take action they do not want to take because they are underpaid. We rely on barristers and solicitors and we do not have enough judges. Yet, we are putting an emphasis on the "bold" people fleeing war and putting the blame on them. I am very wary of narratives coming from Governments to suit their own purposes.

I will not go into the details of the numbers required as they have already been outlined by Deputy Howlin and others.

Part 4 proposes to make amendments to reflect the Supreme Court judgment in the Delaney case. What did that judgment tell us? The court upheld the constitutionality of the guidelines, which the Minister and I welcomed. However, the majority went on to say that section 7(2)(g) of the Judicial Council Act 2019, which empowers the Judicial Council to adopt personal injury guidelines, was an unconstitutional interference with the independence of the Judiciary. This is very serious, is it not? If I was in the Minister's place, I would welcome the fact that Supreme Court upheld part of the Act but interfering with the independence of the Judiciary is a serious statement. Surely it is our role in this House to reflect on what is happening. We cannot do so in this rushed way, although it does not seem very rushed now with an empty Dáil. In the process, the library staff told us they did not have enough time. We are now going to rectify that for all future amendments. I am not quite sure how that happened, although I heard Deputy Howlin refer earlier to the Dáil having at some stage approved the guidelines, saying this gave the authority and that, from now on, the Dáil will have to approve any changes to the guidelines. One would imagine that would be a notice of caution for us, to reflect, use the pre-legislative scrutiny and examine the matter. I cannot imagine why this is not being done.

I welcome the initiative on firearms and defensive weapons, but there is a great absence of statistics. The library has given statistics on the number of knives confiscated. There is a difference between holding a knife, possession of a knife and possession of a knife with intent to use it. To a certain extent I welcome that we are putting a very serious emphasis on those types of crimes and increasing the penalties. However, none of this can never be looked at in isolation, without looking at what Deputy Daly mentioned about restorative justice. All the time we seem to be talking in a vacuum and feeding into a narrative that people have to be punished. I would be the first person to want somebody to be punished for using a knife. I am not making that point. I am making the point that it must be discussed in a greater context. Our prisons are overwhelmed. We are constantly being told that our prisons are overcrowded and overwhelmed. We are not putting the same emphasis on this as we are on increasing penalties, without the statistics to tell us whether this is effective or not. There is no emphasis on restorative justice or taking other ways. For example, tomorrow I will come back to that horrible phrase "domestic violence". I am not using it anymore - violence is violence. We have never looked at the reason the perpetrators continue to perpetrate this type of violence, notwithstanding that in 1997, the interdepartmental task force advised that we needed to look at the perpetrators.

On the designation of the UK as a safe third country, this has never been done before. It is the first time we have designated a country as a safe third country, as distinct from a safe country of origin, which is a different concept. We have designated the UK. What have we been told by the A and B case, as it is known? We have been told that the designation was unlawful and ultra vires. They go into great detail, as does the library and the judgment, as to why that was unlawful and ultra vires. It tells us a lot about England and Rwanda and what started off as partnership and then became some sort of a treaty. It tells us a lot about England. Hopefully, if the electorate votes in a different party, we might get rid of that pact. I live in hope.

As regards what this country has done, we have allowed successive Ministers to function without empowering them, through legislation, to analyse each case on a case-by-case basis. While the judge pointed out that we are under an obligation, full stop, to disallow any national legislation that is not in keeping with our European and international obligations, she went on to say that we need to enable the Government to carry out the onerous obligations on it under international and European law and the European convention, that we have to analyse, case by case, before we return a human being and that we have to ensure that protective guidelines and criteria are set down. We are now going to do this by amendment. We have no sight of that amendment. We are going to rush this through next week. The Minister can see our frustration. I want to work with her.

I want to empower the Minister to look at each case to make sure, on a case-by-case and also on a continuum basis, that the country designated as a safe place continues to be a safe place. There are ongoing obligations. That is what the court has told us. We have a Supreme Court case and a High Court case in two separate areas that tell us we have utterly failed but instead of reflecting on that and bringing forward miscellaneous amendments in the true and correct sense of that word, namely, the correction of errors and so on, the Government will bring in important amendments next week following the case and what was outlined by the judges. We have tried to address one of those cases in this Bill and the other will be addressed next week. I read about other amendments for the first time in the Minister's statement. There is half a paragraph on the amendments she is going to introduce. That is not a way to do business. While I appreciate the Minister might be under pressure, I see no pressure in relation to this. Bringing forward the main substance of a Bill in amendments is simply unacceptable.

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