Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I wish to share time with Senator Quinn.

I welcome the Minister. I declare an interest in that I am a barrister who practises in the area of criminal law and who has done some work in the Special Criminal Court.

To respond to the Minister's speech, I have read the Bill in full. The Minister stated some individuals who had commented on it had not. Having read the Bill, I welcome the opportunity to debate it in the House but am very sorry we are having such a truncated debate. It is most unfortunate that the Government is seeking to take all Stages of the Bill in one day. This renders the debate a sham given that we know the Dáil is not sitting and that a Minister will not be accepting amendments. The ordering of business in this House needs to be carried out in a more measured and realistic manner that permits proper, reasoned debate on important legislation such as this.

To respond to Senator O'Donovan, every speaker on this side of the House and the other would like to express outrage at the horrific killings that have taken place in the name of organised crime and which we all recognise have prompted the introduction of this Bill. Senator O'Donovan has listed some of those killed whose killings have caused considerable public revulsion, including Shane Goeghegan, Wayne Doherty and Roy Collins. I agree with the Minister that the killing of Roy Collins represented a watershed in that it appeared to have been a direct attempt to undermine the criminal justice system.

While we all share the goal of ridding society of the threat of criminal gangs and share in the general revulsion of the killings, the main reason I oppose the Bill is because it will not help in any way the families of the victims of gangland killings. It will not be effective in fighting organised crime. Many people have expressed opposition to the Bill on that basis, including some gardaí, who have expressed strong concern that it may be rendered ineffective, even if it is not referred by the President to the Supreme Court under Article 26. They fear it will very quickly become bogged down in constitutional challenges given the many changes it makes to some of the fundamental principles of our criminal justice system.

There has been some exaggeration on the part of those who support the Bill in total. The Minister, for example, began his speech by referring to the threat to witnesses and potential witnesses of crime, which is clearly accepted. It is important, however, to point out the Bill does nothing to protect witnesses or potential witnesses. The legislative steps already taken have been aimed much more directly at ensuring witnesses are afforded some protection or that other ways of giving evidence can be provided for. I certainly welcome the recently passed Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Bill, which, as the Minister stated, will result in a means of providing evidence without having to rely on witnesses. We welcome the continued operation of the provision introduced some years ago allowing witness statements to be given, even where the witness later retracts. Those measures were introduced to offer some protection against witness intimidation.

The other side of the House has engaged in some lazy or cheap name calling, aimed at those who have expressed serious opposition to or concerns about the Bill. It is not conducive to proper debate to call those us who have expressed doubt about the Bill woolly liberals or to state we are soft on crime. That language has masked real concern by the Members on the Government side that they have gone too far with this Bill in an attempt, by the Minister it seems, to appear tough on crime.

We do not oppose this Bill for the sake of it. Many of us welcomed other criminal justice measures that were introduced. I welcomed the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Bill, which gives surveillance a statutory framework. We were all anxious that that Bill be watertight and, in so far as possible, immune from challenge.

I do not by any means oppose all the provisions in the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2009. As with other Members, I recognise the need for certain measures, including the tightening up the definitions in sections 3, among them the definition of "criminal organisation"; the making of provision for extra-territorial effect in Part 3; and the increasing of the penalties for the intimidation of witnesses and jurors in section in section 16.

While many elements of the Bill are welcome, it is worth noting, however, that many of its provisions amount to amendments of Part 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, which itself was introduced to combat organised crime. Many of the provisions in the latter have proven to be problematic, thereby resulting in the amendments.

Serious objections must be raised regarding three aspects of the Bill in particular, which aspects were referred to by the 133 practising criminal barristers and solicitors who wrote a letter to The Irish Times last week. They were correct to ask for the withdrawal of the Bill and for more detailed and comprehensive debate thereon at a later date. I share their view. The provision in section 7 of the Bill that the existence of a criminal organisation can be proved by the opinion evidence of a garda or former garda of any rank is fundamentally flawed. I have read the Minister's defence of it in today's edition of The Irish Times. That is based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of first principles of evidence because expert evidence is opinion evidence. It amounts to an exception to the general rule against the admission of opinion evidence but it does rely on a common understanding of what is meant by an expert. We all accept that a forensic pathologist can interpret facts differently from a lay person. I cannot look at a dead body and give the sort of evidence that Dr. Cassidy gives so well in so many cases because I do not have that expert knowledge. By declaring somebody in legislation to be an expert does not make that person an expert in the sense of the exception to opinion evidence. That is my fundamental concern about a garda or former garda giving evidence in this way.