Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The position is that the plea of diminished responsibility to which I referred in my last contribution, was introduced in United Kingdom law in the 1950s. This plea does not eliminate criminal liability; it reduces the conviction from a conviction for murder to a conviction for manslaughter. Murder carries with it a mandatory life sentence and for manslaughter the penalty is at the discretion of the court. Diminished responsibility, by definition, can only apply to the relationship between murder and manslaughter where there is a homicide. I suppose one could try to envisage or construct circumstances where diminished responsibility would bring one from actual bodily harm to common assault although in practice, substitute verdicts are generally allowed in that type of trial. The issue of diminished responsibility only arises in the context of a homicide and it has the effect of reducing the culpability of the individual from murder to manslaughter but it does not mean, as in the case of the plea of insanity, that the person is excused from all criminal liability.