Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

I do not propose to accept this amendment because the new section 46C is a statutory provision such that in a trial on indictment, a judge may order the provision of certain information to a jury. He or she is not obliged to do so but he may order it done. This is a practical provision to try to facilitate the understanding of complex evidence by a jury because it could be argued that certain regulatory cases may be difficult to follow as a result of the large amount of factual, commercial and technical evidence involved. I appreciate the Senator's concern but the provision is not designed to facilitate — we would never accuse members of the Judiciary in this regard — the slanting of evidence or to allow people to be selective about such evidence. Rather, it is designed to try to give judges, if they so wish, the opportunity to clarify matters for juries or make such matters more comprehensible. A judge will, therefore, be able to extract ten pages of a document that are relevant to the particular subject under discussion in order to make matters easier for a jury to understand. He or she may do so or he or she may decide to provide the full technical data. I am sure it would be within the rights of a juror, should he or she so wish, to seek an entire document or report.

I spoke to people who were involved in cases of this nature and cases that come before the electronic communications appeals panel and they informed me that the amount of data presented is mind boggling. To require that jurors to be provided with all of this information would be to go too far.

The provision is designed to counter any risk of juries experiencing difficulty with the economic and regulatory rationale behind certain obligations or offences. The decision of a judge to decide whether all or part of the evidence he or she considers appropriate is considered to be reasonable in light of the possible complexity of the proceedings. This type of provision is quite common in Acts relating to company law, competition law, etc. For that reason, I wish to leave the Bill as it stands and I will, therefore, not be accepting the amendment.