Results 4,721-4,740 of 18,728 for speaker:Michael McDowell

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I move amendment No. 86: In page 21, lines 20 and 21, to delete all words from and including "the" in line 20 down to and including "imprisonment," in line 21 and substitute the following: "the court shall, in addition to that sentence of imprisonment, consider whether it is appropriate to".

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: Pleading guilty to being perfect — I thought I did that.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I am a child of the 1960s.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: Was he in the FCA?

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I do not want to delay this, but I would like to respond to Deputy O'Keeffe. The Courts Service is a unique body. It is mainly run by the Judiciary and it is independent of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It is responsible for servicing the courts system, for getting the databases together, for producing annual reports and for collating statistics. That is its function.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I think the service has its own Accounting Officer, but the Department provides it with a block Vote every year.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: There is an Estimates process. They come to me and they get a block Vote. The chief executive of the Courts Service is the Accounting Officer. In case people think that the Executive still runs everything, gets all the information and leaves it on a shelf, I would like to say that this is not so. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform does not do that anymore. That is all...

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I accept that. I was just making the point that the Judiciary is not acting as a group of amateurs when running a data project of its own. That is its function. One of the key functions of the Courts Service is to inform the Judiciary on what is going on. The old-fashioned notion that the Department does everything and the judges are helpless does not exist anymore.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: Yes. Nothing is holding them back. One of the functions of the Courts Service would be to assist the Judiciary in this matter.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: The Denham committee is not some notion that occurred among judges in St. Stephen's Green one afternoon. They run all of these things and are quasi autonomous in this area. They collectively decide whether to sponsor Dr. Coulter's report and so on. They do not come to me looking for money for these things. Before the DPP was given a right of appeal against unduly lenient sentences, there...

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: Like the Deputy, I do not believe that a prosecutor should demand 18 years or something like that. If the Courts Service developed a corpus of data, it should be open to a prosecutor to draw to the attention of a judge precedents from the Court of Criminal Appeal, as well as the general pattern of sentencing in an area. It should be reasonable to put those points before a judge.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I tend to agree with the Hogan report that it is unsatisfactory for a prosecutor to say that we have heard all the weeping stuff, but we should remember A, B, C and D.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: It is not a Bar Council issue.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I will be brief. I do not think that speech is an aggravation or necessary. When imposing sentence, a judge should have obtained from the Garda the effects on the victim, the antecedents on the accused and he should have the facts of the case fairly clearly in his or her mind. A judge does not need speeches to remind him or her of that. We do not have to go down the road where people are...

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I thank Deputies Jim O'Keeffe and Ó Snodaigh for what they said. The purpose of this section is as set out in the original scheme of the Bill which, as Deputy Jim O'Keeffe stated, sounds right. We must ask, however, whether this is the right way to do it. I am conscious of the fact that we began with the proposition that anybody who got a one-year sentence was walking into this repeat...

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I regard the Constitution as something that we all have to uphold wholeheartedly, as we understand it.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: It strikes me that it is a reasonable approach to serious gangland crime that certain offences should attract substantial sentences if they, or offences of a similar category, are repeated. In that context, we should not be reluctant to provide a safety valve mechanism so that if the imposition of the three quarter sentence was gravely disproportionate, a court should not impose it. There...

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (Resumed) (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I indicated it last week.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I agree with Deputy Jim O'Keeffe. The Deputies can have five more years to consider the issue.

Criminal Justice Bill 2007: Report Stage (4 Apr 2007)

Michael McDowell: I move amendment No. 48: In page 14, line 28, to delete "(4)" and substitute "(5)". These are technical drafting amendments to renumber the sections. As printed, section 15 contains two subsections (4).