Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Report Stage is scheduled for next Tuesday and it is normally followed by the Fifth and final Stage. The Department hopes the Bill will be enacted as soon as possible and no one wishes to delay it.

I will read out the lengthy official response as it explains the reasoning behind the Government's position. As Senator Bradford has rightly pointed out, the proposal is not entirely new. The rest of civilised society has it and we have waited a long time for it. I am glad to know that nobody has seriously objected to the provisions. The comments have been recorded by my officials. The Bill as published has been substantially amended and I shall get to that later on. I know the Minister is open to the type of interaction that occurs when debating legislation.

The Government has given a lot of consideration to the length of custodial sentences to be covered by the Bill. This arises in the definition of "excluded sentence" where we exclude sentences above a certain length, and in the definition of a "relevant custodial sentence" where the Bill lists the range of custodial sentences covered by legislation.

As Members will know, the United Kingdom has recently amended its legislation to provide that sentences of up to four years are covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Some say that should be the benchmark for us when devising our scheme. Senator van Turnhout and Sinn Féin have settled on two years and 30 months, respectively.

It is worth saying that the UK legislation is now probably the most liberal in the common law world. Meanwhile, what we are proposing, compared to Australia and New Zealand, is at the more liberal end of the spectrum. In most Australian states, only prison sentences of six months or less are covered, while in New Zealand no one who is sentenced to imprisonment can benefit from their corresponding legislation. It is worth recalling also that the genesis of this legislation was the highly regarded Law Reform Commission report on spent convictions. The report recommended that only sentences of six months or less should be covered.

In preparing the legislation the Government decided to go the extra mile and cover sentences of up to 12 months. However, the Government is not prepared to go further than this. The 12-month cut-off covers almost 90% of all custodial sentences handed down by the courts in Ireland. That is worth keeping in mind. By any yardstick a regime that allows that proportion of custodial sentences to become spent is generous.

It is for these reasons that the Government is not in a position to accept Senator van Turnhout's amendments Nos. 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 15, which seek to increase the length of custodial sentence covered by the Bill to two years. Nor can we accept Sinn Féin's amendments Nos. 4 and 6, which seek to increase the length of custodial sentence covered by the legislation from the 12 months contained in the Bill to 30 months.

The length of sentence covered by this legislation must be balanced by the length of time that a person must remain conviction free before a conviction becomes spent. We will be discussing Government amendments shortly that significantly reduce the waiting period in the Bill. That is where the Government has decided to adjust the balance in the Bill. The Government is satisfied that taking together the length of sentence covered and the waiting period, the scheme represents a fair balance that will benefit the vast majority of offenders who want to get on with their lives.

I take on board what Senators Cullinane and Healy Eames have said. We have all had experience of people not being able to move on in their chosen professions or to emigrate.

As regards Government amendments Nos. 5 and 17, having reviewed the sentences covered by the Bill and having considered various representations made, the Minister has decided to amend the provisions concerning suspended sentences to provide that sentences of up to 24 months, which are suspended in whole, and while the suspension is not subsequently revoked, are covered by the legislation. Therefore, people who get a suspended sentence of 24 months will now be covered. We are doing this primarily to recognise that suspended sentences should be distinguished from custodial sentences.

The Bill, as published, treats a suspended sentence of more than 12 months the same as a custodial sentence of more than 12 months. In limiting the length of suspended sentences to two years, the Government is conscious that the length of a sentence is intended to reflect the gravity of the offence, and that sentences may be suspended for a variety of reasons that do not take away from the seriousness of the crime. To give effect to the change in the approach to suspended sentences, amendment No. 5 amends the definition of "excluded sentence" to remove the reference to suspended sentences.

Amendment No. 17 is both a Government amendment and an amendment put forward by Senator van Turnhout. It seeks to amend paragraph (a) of the definition of "non-custodial sentences" to increase the length of suspended sentence covered by the Bill from 12 to two years.