Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The Criminal Justice Act 2007 introduced new offences for membership of an organised criminal gang, with an imposition of five years in prison, and for committing an offence for a criminal gang, ten years. Some people ask whether cases have been brought in relation to that. It is much more difficult — it was somewhat easier to ground a case against a terrorist organisation — to ground an offence as to what constitutes a gang. We introduced new procedures to allow for the use of witness statements, where the witness recants and fails to stand over a previous statement, due to intimidation. The State had a very successful case very recently, when 11 witnesses made written statements and recanted those when they came to court. The judge, because of the change we made, was able to ignore their swearing under oath that they did not want to give evidence. He was able to take the written statement and convict a person for ten years of a very serious offence. Therefore as a result of the change made by the Oireachtas, a serious criminal has been put away.

We also brought in, under the 2006 Act, increased penalties for possession of firearms. We strengthened the mandatory ten-year sentencing for drug trafficking. In the 2007 legislation, we tightened the bail requirements. Now the opinion of a chief superintendent that bail should be refused because a person is likely to commit a serious offence is admissible as evidence under that. There is new mandatory sentencing for repeat offenders and a restatement on the rules governing the right to silence. There are post-release monitoring orders and protection of persons orders to assist the Garda in the supervision of convicted persons and protect witnesses and victims.

We made other changes. There is an indefinite retention period for taking finger prints. The use of reasonable force is allowed in the taking of finger prints, which is draconian in any democracy. There are restrictions on giving video evidence of Garda interviews to suspects. There is the detention of suspects for up to seven days to facilitate the investigation of serious offences, such as murder involving a firearm or explosive, capital murder, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and kidnapping involving a firearm or explosive. In the legislation there is also a provision on admissibility in evidence of a videotape of the Garda interview without contemporaneous Garda notes.

As I said, I will bring in a criminal procedure Bill under the justice for victims initiative I announced some months ago. One of the major issues in that legislation is doing away with the rule of double jeopardy. This is a very significant departure from normal criminal law. That legislation is well prepared and the heads of the Bill will go to Government before Christmas for drafting. I hope to have the Bill published before spring 2009. We are including in the Bill something that came up before. We always keep legislation under review and we will continue to do so, but because this issue arose over the past few months, this legislation, which is primarily to deal with some of the issues in the Hogan report on balance in the criminal law, particularly in relation to giving more power to the victims, we are empowering the DPP to seek an order to allow cases to be retried, following an acquittal, including cases where there has been tampering with evidence or with the trial process. We are also introducing a provision whereby notice must be given by the defence. What has happened in recent times is that a number of defence teams have brought in new evidence at a very late stage in a criminal trial. Because of this change they will now have to give notice of such evidence. They will not be able to take the prosecution short by producing evidence at the last minute.

I spoke on this matter on the Adjournment in the other House last night, but it is a fairly restricted way of operating. There is a debate on crime tomorrow, but I felt it was necessary to come to this House and use the opportunity — albeit regarding CAB — to say to all political parties here that the Government is open to any suggestions on legislative change that is necessary, but I must counter that. It must fly from a legal point of view, because irrespective of whether we like it, we have a Constitution which states implicitly that people are entitled to a fair trial.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for giving me some leniency to speak. A number of points were raised recently regarding CAB and bringing people back from Spain and other countries. The Garda Síochána has liaison officers in all major embassies in Europe. We have full-time gardaí in London, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, the Hague, where they work with Europol, Lyon, working with Interpol, and in Lisbon, working with MAOC-N, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre for Narcotics. When I was in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and in my current Department, I was to the fore in setting up this. We also have customs officers in the Hague for Europol and in Lisbon for MAOC-N, and we will have an additional person there in the coming months.