Results 1,561-1,580 of 1,683 for speaker:Derek McDowell

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: The point is that Senator Norris would probably have access to a solicitor who would take out an injunction for him. I urge him to now picture himself in an apartment block run by a local authority, where he does not have the wherewithal to go down to his local solicitor and obtain an injunction or does not even know about the law relating to injunctions. The Senator should try to picture...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: An ASBO does not criminalise misbehaviour any more than the civil injunction and contempt punishment criminalises ordinary behaviour. It is a simple thing. In certain circumstances, a person's behaviour may cross a threshold which requires him or her to be brought to court. An order is made on the balance of probabilities, using the civil standard of proof, against that person and if he or...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: ——had the right to summon before them people to require them to enter a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. That has been a power of common law judges since the year dot. That is preventative justice of exactly the same kind. It asserts that we have a basis in which to say to a person that if he or she does not behave in future, he or she will be punished. There is nothing...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: The truth is that the neighbour's interests are what we must protect.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: I defer to Senator Norris if he wants to posture on the fashionable side of this argument, but I point out to him that the fashion is not to be found in the letters column of one newspaper or in the collective musings of the NGO sector. The Senator should attend one of Senator Cummins's meetings to find out from people who have experienced such behaviour where the real balance of opinion lies...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: ——what it is like to live beside a family from hell and for those constituents to say they must leave their neighbourhood because there are people in it who are set on making their lives a misery. That is very wrong. Such actions do not have to amount to criminal behaviour for the reasons I mentioned. I gave the Senator examples. None of those actions would constitute a crime. If a...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: We should remember that when those people find a vulnerable gay person living in their community, that kind of obsessive hatred will be vented in a homophobic way on that person. A person who is lonely, vulnerable and does not have a robust constitution cannot put up with that for three or five years. At some stage he or she will say, "I just cannot live in this street anymore, I am off"....

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: ——who manufactured a little storm about such orders and feel so good about doing so but do not live beside a neighbour from hell.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: This has nothing to do with children. The sections the Senator is opposing apply to adults.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: They have access to legal aid under the Act.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: The other people can go to the gardaí who will help them. That is the service which will be provided.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: It is up to a point. If the State is to subsidise a legal argument between lawyers on both sides of every dispute between neighbours, a situation would pertain similar to that in the UK where the legal aid bill costs £2 billion per year.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: We cannot afford this.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: It is not a lawyer-fattening matter.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: Senator Tuffy was making a different point. She argued that she experienced sleepless nights as a result of the incident and that this is the experience of people at the receiving end of anti-social behaviour.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: I am sympathetic to Senator Jim Walsh's argument. If a person was coming to the end of his or her sentence, in practical terms, the chances of him or her being moved to a prison are slight. The authorities tend to put them out on temporary release rather than move them to a new environment where they would learn bad habits.

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: I agree that such is a hard case. For a woman in those circumstances, it is a real Sophie's Choice situation. Does one destroy the family, imprison the bread winner and make the family destitute or does one protect one's child? I would hate to be in that position and I cannot conceive of an easy answer. To fail to apply this provision to a parent who sees a child being abused by another...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: The Senator's point is a good one. The term is particularly defined in this context as someone who is believed to be abusing a child. We are discussing people who recklessly endanger a child by causing him or her to be left in such a situation because they are safe as long as the abuser in question is never convicted. For example, take the Ferns Inquiry, from which this all falls. Where were...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: The Senator will appreciate that we are criminalising assaults on firemen, nurses in hospitals and people engaged in the due execution of their duties. The real question is whether someone rendering medical assistance other than in a hospital should be the subject of this provision, such as a general practitioner on a house call who becomes involved in a fracas there. In this legislation, we...

Seanad: Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage. (3 Jul 2006)

Derek McDowell: A newspaper editorial told us to wake up, but we were already well down the road to making this law. However, that does not take away from the fact that the hatred shown for a fireman, an ordinary, decent member of the community——