Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

On behalf of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and on my own behalf, I thank Senators for the time and effort they have devoted to this Bill and for their many contributions which served to improve it as it progressed through this House. I was involved in some of the debates in question in this House.

The Minister decided to initiate the Bill in this House because he believed that the reflective capacity of the Seanad could improve the legislation. That is reflected in the fact that the most significant changes to it were made during its passage here. The Minister wants to single out, in particular, Senators Henry, Tuffy and Terry, who put in a good deal of work on this Bill and made many positive contributions in the discussions. Senators will acknowledge that the Minister showed a willingness to take on board suggestions for amendments. It might have taken a number of attempts before he accepted certain amendments, but it goes to show that perseverance sometimes may pay dividends. I would not advocate perseverance in all cases as regards this Minister, however.

The Minister was happy to have been in a position to accept amendments to improve the Bill and to be able to deliver, following a promise of further consideration on a range of other points that merited serious attention. The Bill is a historic measure in a way for the following reasons: for the first time there are provisions in place for readily-accessible statutory rules of the test for insanity and related issues in the criminal law; new administrative arrangements will replace outdated and Byzantine rules for the transfer of prisoners who are mentally ill as between prisons and psychiatric centres; the introduction of the concept of diminished responsibility in cases of murder; new rules for courts to avoid referring persons who are mentally ill to prison and allow them, instead, to be referred for care or treatment to a designated psychiatric centre on an inpatient or outpatient basis, as appropriate, under the control of the court; and most crucially, the establishment in line with the European Convention on Human Rights of a new independent review board which will keep under ongoing and active review, with the power to release, the cases of all persons who are detained because of fitness to plead issues, or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, or who have become mentally ill while serving sentences of imprisonment.

There are many other technical provisions in the Bill which go a long way towards improving and modernising in a most humane manner the complex and often tragic area of the criminal law. Some might argue that it has taken a long time for us to reach this point. As the consideration of this measure in Seanad Éireann and the other House showed, it took a long time to deal with this legislation, although it does not contain a substantial number of sections. That illustrates the complexity and difficulty of the judgments which we legislators must make in this particular process of the law.

I noticed that the Minister commented in the Dáil that over a quarter of a century had passed since the issue of criminal insanity was first dealt with by Judge Henchy in his report. This Bill substantially takes on board the recommendations of the committee chaired by Judge Henchy. In the circumstances, and in conclusion, the Minister and I want to take the opportunity to thank Judge Henchy and his committee for the seminal work they did when they produced the report in 1978. It is no exaggeration that in many respects it is just as relevant today as it was then.