Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)

We need to be very careful with this Bill. The Minister needs to get this right because there are legitimate concerns about it. The purpose of the Bill is to give effect to the EU directive 2017/541 on combating terrorism, which is to a large extent directed at the foreign terrorist fighter phenomenon. The Bill includes offences of travelling to commit a terrorist offence, facilitating travel to commit a terrorist offence and receiving training for terrorism. Essentially, the 2017 directive is an updated version of already existing EU counter-terrorism measures. Its main purpose was to establish new offences to address the issue of foreign terrorist fighters.

I would like to concentrate a little on the timeline of how we got here. In September 2014, UN Security Council Resolution 2178 was adopted. It called on all members to address the issue of foreign terrorist fighters. The general scheme was then published on 8 September 2020. Over a year later, in December 2021, the Oireachtas committee joint agreed with the then Minister for Justice that it was not necessary to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny on the general scheme of the Bill. Considering the conversation we are having today, this is very strange. As the Bill has been promised since 2020, no one can argue that this has been treated as a priority. If we go back even further, Ireland signed the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism in October 2008. We have yet to ratify the convention. The phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters had already been identified as an issue in the 2008 Council of Europe convention. The convention requires member states to create offences relating to public provocation to commit terrorist offences and recruitment and training for terrorism. We had done that much in the Act of 2005. The related protocol 215 to the convention supplements it and seeks to criminalise certain additional acts. The Bill finally published this year and being debated now will give effect to the requirements of the protocol Ireland signed ten years ago, as well as some outstanding earlier legislative commitments that will enable us to ratify a convention we signed 17 years ago.

More than six years ago, on 5 March 2019, the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, reported to the House that he and other heads of government at the EU-League of Arab States summit had committed to working together more closely to address the root causes of terrorism and to continue joint efforts to combat foreign terrorist fighters. This was more than six years ago. In the same month six years ago, the then Minister for justice, Charlie Flanagan, said that the shared challenges facing all member states arising from the phenomenon of suspected foreign terrorist fighters had been a consistent focus of discussion with EU colleagues at meetings of justice and interior ministers.

Meanwhile, in the real world, while all of this theorising, debating, stalling and discussing was going on, a former Irish soldier travelled to Syria, during the civil war there, to join ISIS. We all now know that Lisa Smith was prosecuted and convicted of the offence of membership of an unlawful terrorist group and sentenced to 15 months in prison. If the gaps in the criminal law that the Bill is trying to fill might be of some practical assistance in cases like that of Lisa Smith, why the extraordinary delay in getting around to passing it? It is a simple question. If the Bill's provisions are not that important and we can have successful trials and prosecutions without it, we should not oversell it. The Minister should give an honest assessment of it, one way or the other.

The Bill proposes to transpose into domestic law the 2017 EU directive by amending aspects of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005 and to introduce the following offences: receiving training for terrorism, travelling for the purposes of terrorism and facilitating travel for the purposes of terrorism. Ireland has an opt-out in EU justice matters. We signalled an intention to opt in to this measure soon after it was adopted. According to the regulatory impact assessment for this Bill, transposition will allow Ireland to also opt in to EU regulation 2023/2131, which aims to modernise the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, Eurojust, and to update this system for digital information exchange in terrorism cases. It is reasonable to ask, now that we have all had time to reflect after Brexit, whether we intend opting in to become the default option in justice and home affairs into the future.

The implementation of this Bill will be monitored by the new Office of the Independent Examiner of Security Legislation, which was set up under the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024. In this case, as the Minister is aware, the independent examiner is Mr. Justice George Birmingham, a retired president of the Court of Appeal. Once the Bill has been passed, he will be required to produce a review of its operational effectiveness at least once every three years.

There is serious concern about some of the wording in this Bill. I think this concern is genuine. The definitions are critical. Freedom of expression and how far this Bill could potentially go is worrying for some people. These are genuine worries. We all know what is going on with Mo Chara and Kneecap; it has been referenced before. The phrase "glorification of terrorism" and how it is understood and defined, reaches into other areas of the Bill, can impact on the execution of the Bill and, in practice, can be used in everyday life is a concern for me. I genuinely want to support the theme of this legislation. That is the Labour Party's position but we have to get this right. The Minister really needs to get this right. I believe we will have to bring in a certain number of amendments. I hope the Minister will discuss them with us and take our views on board.

Considering the Bill we are discussing, I want to raise some issues relating to the case of Evan Fitzgerald, the manner in which he was arrested and charged and his suicide. I want to say this to the Minister in a very honest way. I have probably never said this before, but it is one of the most disturbing things I have ever had to deal with in my life, not just in my career. From everything I know now, it is harrowing. It is so disturbing and I am deeply upset about it. I have had sleepless nights over this issue.

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