Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

This amendment relates to the circumstances arising when a person has been provisionally arrested pending receipt of the formal request from the sentencing state. The existing proposal is that the court should remand the person in question. The amendment proposes to delete the requirement that the remand should be "in custody" and proposes instead that the person should be remanded. Remand in custody following provisional arrest is established practice under extradition law. Application of the procedures under the Extradition Act and the European Arrest Warrant Act to the new circumstances appears appropriate because the procedures provided for in the Bill are in many respects an alternative to extradition or surrender, with the benefit that the person receives an opportunity to serve the sentence in his or her home state.

It must be remembered that the person has already absconded from the sentencing state and shown a propensity to flee. If the person had not fled, he or she would not be in detention in the sentencing state. Allowing for the possibility of release following provisional arrest would undeniably result in absconders doing another disappearing act and lead to protracted judicial proceedings, which would waste the time of the court on what would be unmeritorious pleas, given that they come from the mouth of a person who has already absconded. I do not propose to accept the amendment.