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

We all know people like the person outlined in Senator Cullinane's contribution but the Sinn Féin amendment seeks to remove the two conviction limit from the legislation altogether. The Government has made it clear from the start that the legislation is aimed at the person who makes a mistake, perhaps in his youth, and who now wants to get on with his life. There is no argument there. It is not, however, a charter for criminality. It is based on the premise that people deserve a second or third chance. It does not envisage an open-ended, rolling spending of convictions throughout someone's life. It is legislation for those people who contact our clinics every day who ran foul of the law in their youth and feel it has the potential to stand against them when looking for a job. They want to put it behind them and the legislation is intended to assist those people. They are not career criminals.

Sinn Féin's amendment would not provide a deterrent to criminality but would, and I accept this is not the intention, hold out the prospect that no matter how often a person offends, a day will come in the future where his convictions will be spent. That is not in the interest of the offender or society.

We want people to stop committing crimes. We do not want to see further re-offending and we want to assist in discouraging recidivism. The limit on the number of convictions that can become spent makes a positive contribution to rehabilitation and reintegration. It is for those reasons that the Government cannot accept the amendment to remove the cap on the number of convictions that may become spent under the Bill.

Government amendment No. 22 makes an exception to the two conviction rule and Senator van Turnhout has also tabled an amendment to this effect. A person can be convicted of more than one offence at one sitting of the court but section 2(2)(e) of the Bill provides that a person can have no more than two spent convictions. Situations arise, however, quite regularly where a number of convictions are handed down at one court sitting related to disparate aspects of one incident. A person who comes to the notice of the gardaí while intoxicated may be charged with and convicted of a number of public order offences. Equally, a person may be convicted of a number of road traffic offences related to one encounter with the gardaí. The intent of the two conviction rule in section 2(2)(e) is to allow someone to have two chances. Without this amendment, for many people the Act would not provide even one chance as they would have to declare a third and subsequent conviction for the same offence, thus making largely irrelevant the non-disclosure of the two spent convictions. Senator van Turnhout's amendment No. 23 has the same intent as the Government amendment and I hope she will support it. The amendment allows that in the event all of the convictions are handed down in one sitting, they are treated as one conviction.