Results 81-100 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: The Children Act does not apply to anybody over 18. That is a simple fact.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: That is a different thing.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: I am just trying to understand the logic of it. Clearly, the Children Act does not apply to anybody who is over 18. The Minister's base point is, as I understand it, that anomalous category. My contention is that you cannot create a perfect equality between somebody aged under 18 and somebody aged over 18 because one is categorised as a child and the other is not. What the Minister wants...
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: Children cannot be sent to prison under the Children Act. The Minister is saying that children who have aged out and are now adults can be sent to prison.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: No, the Minister is disapplying a mandatory life sentence but they can get a life sentence. That is what the Minister told us yesterday.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: That is what I am saying. A child cannot be sent to prison. There is no equality there.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: What is silent?
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: There is no reference to murder. Section 156 of the Children Act 2001 states: "No court shall pass a sentence of imprisonment on a child or commit a child to prison." That is what the law of the land states. A child who offends can be made subject to a detention order under that Act but, under the Minister's proposal, aged-out children can be sent to prison. Is that not a fact?
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: If I withdraw the amendment now, a court could impose a prison sentence on an aged-out child. The Minister told us yesterday that aged-out children could be sentenced to life imprisonment, in fact. I am trying to understand the Minister's own proposal. If I withdraw the amendment, what will be the state of the law? Will it be open to a court to send such an aged-out child to prison for murder?
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: The Minister's officials are saying "Yes", so it will be.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: It is possible, then, to send an aged-out adult to prison. It is not possible to commit a child to prison. There is no equality.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: I quoted the Children Act because the Minister said it would default to the Children Act in terms of equality. An adult cannot be treated as a child.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: It is not in any statute, that is my point.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: It does not.
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: I am trying to follow the Minister's logic. We can only deal with the law as is and the laws we are creating, not what might come down from another judgment of the superior courts that might have implications for the law. My difficulty with this, to follow the Minister's logic, is that any child under the age of 18 who is convicted of murder and sentenced in court cannot, under the 2001...
- Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: I move amendment No. 1: In page 3, to delete lines 15 to 19 and substitute the following: “(b) the addition of the following subsections after subsection (1): “(2) Subsection (1) shall not apply to the sentencing of a person convicted of murder who was under the age of 18 years when he or she committed the murder but has attained that age on or before the date of such...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs: General Affairs Council Meetings: Discussion (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: I thank the Minister of State for a broad-ranging presentation. I will deal with four areas. First, the issue that has focused all of us, and everybody in the world, is the ongoing and disintegrating situation in the Middle East. We are horrified, and have been for a year, by the carnage in Gaza. We seem to be moving further away from a ceasefire there, especially now there is the...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs: General Affairs Council Meetings: Discussion (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: CCDCOE.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs: General Affairs Council Meetings: Discussion (25 Sep 2024)
Brendan Howlin: You will be on your own.