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

We had this discussion at the start. We cannot control what other countries demand of people who wish to live there and they cannot control what we do. The reason we have differences, in terms of lengths of time and length of convictions covered, is that different jurisdictions treat things differently. An offence in another country, which we may consider very serious, may well be treated very leniently there. That is an issue.

We should never rule ourselves out of the equation where we could not ask for the criminal record of someone who we suspect of having a criminal past. Even if it is a spent conviction, it may be something we have not covered in our law. We need to keep that in mind. We need to know that if a conviction is spent in another jurisdiction, it will not be automatically be accepted in this country as being spent. That is case in other countries which have this legislation, no matter how liberal or restrictive.

In regard to amendment No. 27, the Minister is considering bringing forward amendments on Report Stage to further streamline the provision in section 9 relating to the process by which additional relevant work is brought within the ambit of the Bill. I think that is the point Senator Cullinane made earlier.

The Bill already contains a number of safeguards in regard to request for information in the first instance. Under section 5, a person cannot be required to disclose a spent conviction or the circumstances ancillary thereto. Section 5(2) states that where a person is asked about a previous conviction, he or she may regard the question as not applying to his or her spent conviction in certain areas of work, provided they are not in the Schedule which determines he or she must.

Furthermore under section 11, where a person seeks his or her own criminal record - that is sometimes the case when a person is applying for a job where the employer may not be in a position to get the information - the Garda Síochána is required to provide the record in two parts, one with the spent convictions and the other with the non-spent convictions, if any. Where a person only has spent convictions, he or she can provide the requester with a clean record. Again, it is a major safeguard in terms of how people are treated at interview. Unfortunately, in the circumstances, the Government is not in a position to accept the amendment.