Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

I concur fully with what the Minister has said and believe he has dealt with the matter comprehensively. I also agree with Senator Terry. In respect of Senator Norris's comments, great consideration and weight was given to the issue of mens rea at the meetings of the Oireachtas joint committee with responsibility for child protection. The committee heard from legal people who made the point from a legal perspective. Having weighed the matter up, there are other issues one must consider relating to child protection. A very compelling piece of information that was put before us was that since the "CC" case, the number of cases being pursued had dropped significantly. It was felt that if people were able to use this defence, which obviously would not be used only by the person who genuinely made a mistake but also by most defendants to extricate themselves from the charges, it would probably lead to a negligible number of cases being taken. This would be a serious miscarriage of justice.

The second thing the committee did, which might be of interest to Senator Norris and is related to the weight given to mens rea, was to recommend that honest mistake should be linked with a new age of consent of 16 to tie it all together so it is clear. We were effectively saying that anybody who had sex with a person under 16 has an absolute responsibility to satisfy themselves as to the young person's age. This related to peer sex, while other issues related to people in authority. The Minister made a very sensible suggestion to the committee that an age differential might be introduced as part of that definition, but that is another argument.