Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Seanad, the officials who dealt with this Bill, the Members on the other side of the House and those on my side of the House. This is a significant Bill that makes a fairly dramatic change in the criminal law. I believe the procedures under this Bill will be used sparingly. The main procedures regarding the issue of retrial will be used sparingly. It was never intended that they would be used very often but only in exceptional circumstances. The amendments I have brought before the House have changed the original setting out of the way these procedures are to be implemented, both before the Director of Public Prosecutions makes an application for a retrial and for the court to determine whether that application should be granted. To a certain extent, it might not happen but conceivably it could. It is one of the reasons I decided to go for this and move forward in the Department. I was also conscious that Members on both sides of the House had endeavoured to get us to retrospectively apply provisions of the Bill. However, common sense and legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General dictated that was not possible. We made a slight amendment to the Bill, but we did not go the whole way to include offences committed prior to its commencement. The reason is that somebody convicted of an offence has to know what the law is on the date on which the offence was committed. If the Legislature was to be in a position to change the law subsequent to an offence happening, putting at peril the person who potentially committed the offence or had been acquitted, that would not be fair and reasonable. There were also good and very strong reasons from the Attorney General's office, not least the issue of the Oireachtas interfering in acquittals and decisions made by the Judiciary. It goes to the very heart of the separation of powers; we cannot interfere with the role of the Judiciary as laid down in the Constitution. Equally, the phrase "in due course of law" which is in the Constitution relating to the conducting of a fair trial is a very strong mandate to the Oireachtas to ensure the laws passed are reasonable and fair and do not change the goalposts just because of the political mood of the politicians present in the Oireachtas at a particular time.

I genuinely thank my officials for the work done on this and the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill 2009. The amount of work carried out in this respect has been phenomenal and I thank my officials for the Trojan work they did, particularly on the briefing material and explanations available for me to give to both Houses. We are extremely well served by the public servants we have in this respect. Time and again there is public criticism, but we are extremely well served by our public servants. I thank publically the public servants involved with this Bill.

I also thank the Seanad. I am delighted to see a predecessor of mine has changed his view on its role. Once Michael McDowell became Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and fully understood the examination of legislation by the Seanad, he knew his previously expressed view that it was not required was not correct. That has come home to me just as much, even though I was never of the view that we should get rid of the Seanad. Two thirds of all legislation which passes through the Oireachtas comes from the Department of Justice and Law Reform. The Seanad is an extremely useful tool to me as Minister, the Department and officials. Quite a number of suggestions have come from the both sides of the House which alerted my officials to issues which did not occur to them. It is only valid that we have a double examination, checks and balances as it were between both Houses of the Oireachtas, something I welcome.