Derek McDowell (Labour)

I move amendment No. 14:

In page 10, after line 43, to insert the following new subsection:

"(14) A court exercising jurisdiction pursuant to this section may direct that the closure order shall commence on a date not later than 6 months from the date of the order of the court.".

This amendment seeks to give the court more discretion than does the Bill regarding when the closure takes place. The Bill is quite strict as to exactly when the closure should start, that is, within a certain number of days following the conviction or the appeal. We seek to give the court some added discretion as to the specific period in which the closure would apply.

My wife is from Lisdoonvarna in north Clare. I mention this only because the licensing laws in that part of the country are very interesting. I sometimes wonder whether the licensing laws extend there at all at certain times of the year. The trade is extremely cyclical and seasonal and there are times of the year when no business seems to be done in many pubs and there are other times when a huge amount of business is done.

Obviously, the effect of a closure order would be greater or less depending on when it applied. By giving discretion to the court to decide the period in which – within six months – the order would apply, in a sense allows it some discretion to modulate the severity of the closure. There are times when a closure order would not affect pubs in some parts of the country very much, although there are times when it would affect them a great deal. It seems reasonable to give a judge discretion to modulate the order in that way.