Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 12, line 38, after "Court" to insert the following:

"if satisfied that the Director has given the person concerned all reasonable notice to facilitate his or her appearance and".

I tabled two of these three amendments on Committee Stage and the Minister pointed out that I had omitted one related amendment. Therefore I tabled a third, but they are all, essentially, along the same lines. These are amendments relating to section 8, where the Director of Public Prosecutions is applying for a retrial order where a person has been acquitted, and section 9, where the director is applying for a retrial where there was a previous acquittal. The third one relates to the actual hearing of the retrial. In all those cases the amendments seek to ensure the court would only proceed to hear and determine an application in the absence of a person where it was satisfied not only that it was in the interests of justice to do so - the Minister's wording - but also that the Director had given the person concerned all reasonable notice to facilitate his or her appearance.

On Committee Stage I pointed out that any of these applications could be made some years after a person had been acquitted. The person, in the meantime, clearly is regarded as innocent in law and therefore has no obligation to make his or her address known to the Garda or the authorities since he or she has been acquitted. It might well be that it is impossible or very difficult to track down the person. That is why it is important the court should be satisfied that the DPP has made all reasonable attempts to track down the person before it proceeds to hear and determine an application of this importance in his or her absence.

I was concerned on Committee Stage that the Minister had used the term, "absconding" about a person against whom a retrial order is being sought under any of these sections. I pointed out that "absconding" was not the appropriate term to use because the person might simply not be capable of being found, not through any deliberate attempt to avoid having to turn up in court but simply because a free person would have been entitled, for example, to have gone abroad in the meantime. It is a useful extra safeguard for the person who has been acquitted and in respect of whom these applications are being made.

Again, given the radical nature of the departure from the current rules of criminal procedure that Part 3 represents, it is important to ensure the DPP's office has an obligation to make all reasonable attempts to track down a person against whom it is seeking a retrial order under any of these sections. I ask the Minister to agree to take on board, if not in these precise terms, the principle that the DPP's office should be legally obliged to make all reasonable attempts to facilitate the appearance of the person against whom it is seeking these retrial orders under any of these three sections.