Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The discrepancy we are trying to remove inserts this on the other side. There is a second element to this. There is a Supreme Court case which is looking at murder as it applies to a child. Apologies that I did not say this earlier but this particular case has the potential to require further changes in legislation. The Children Act is being worked on at the moment, and there is an amendment Bill separate from this one, which is emergency legislation, in which I believe we would be able to explore this further, to go into it in greater detail, and to have the time to look at sentencing overall where it applies to children, not just for murder but for other areas as well. That would be the best place to do that.

The very clear advice I have is that, by accepting these amendments, instead of levelling matters we would add a discrepancy for aged-out children where it does not currently exist for children in relation to murder. I hope I am explaining that correctly. I want to work with the Deputy on this and to make sure, given the complexity and the severity of what we are talking about regarding the sentence and the implication for a child, that we have time to be able to work through this.

I believe what we have here in this amendment Bill will address the ruling by the High Court judge and provide that equality that was requested. There is more work we can do to try to explore the sentencing overall when it comes to children or children who have aged out. For that reason I cannot accept the amendment because there is more work we need to do and to work on together to make sure we get that right.

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