Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for his kind comments on the Bill. It is almost two years since I introduced a Private Members' Bill in the House to prohibit female genital mutilation. I was delighted when the then Government took it up as a Government Bill and the current Government committed to introducing it. I thank the Minister for his personal interest and steering of the Bill through the Seanad and Dáil. The fact it has taken two years may be due to the fact that a Government fell in the meantime and we entered an IMF programme. There are many reasons for the delay. I am glad the Bill will pass.

I pay tribute to AkiDwA, the organisation represented in the Gallery, which has done a great deal of work on this issue in Ireland. In respect of the two amendments made in the Dáil, other amendments were mooted and discussed. We also fully discussed them in the Seanad. Perhaps they will be made by way of other legislation in the future.

I was concerned about dual criminality, namely, that the Bill would have allowed prosecution for an offence where a person here took a girl or woman abroad to have female genital mutilation performed in a country where it was not an offence. We received the advice of the Attorney General and were told it would not be possible to remove the provision and that the act must also constitute an offence in the place where it is done. It is a minor point which it would have been good to see addressed by way of amendment. Work is ongoing on the matter.

Amnesty International also raised issues about definitions in the Bill. Those issues were fully debated in the Seanad and Dáil. The amendments made in the Dáil and which we are agreeing today are technical and I support them.