Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome the introduce the Bill, which has received general support. I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill in the House. He has done this with justice-related Bills on a number of occasions and this is welcome, especially when there is general support in principle for the legislation but a number of complex issues must be teased out. Senator van Turnhout raised a number of them in her contribution.

It is important that support is maintained for the in camera rule in principle and that we recognise that family law and child care proceedings are an exception to the norm under Article 34.1 concerning the administration of justice in public. It is right and proper that there should be exceptions. However, as the Minister said, we need to balance the need for privacy in proceedings involving inter-family disputes and child care proceedings with the need for public access to important information on the operation of these proceedings and patterns, trends and statistics on the proceedings

This is where the gap has been. This was partially addressed through the Courts and Civil Liability Act 2004, as the Minister stated, which enabled some research to be conducted, and I pay tribute to Dr. Carol Coulter who carried out the family law reporting pilot project and gave her report to the Courts Service in 2007 on the authority given her by the Courts and Civil Liability Act 2004. She wrote extensively on the need for this balance to be in operation and for the in camerarule to be modified to enable some reporting. She pointed out the irony that in the period running up to the referendum on divorce there was widespread public discussion on family breakdown and the impact of divorce on society, but this discussion came to an abrupt end when divorce was introduced, and no attempt could be made to examine how it was working out in practice while the in camerarule remained in place. The 1996 Law Reform Commission report on the family courts had criticised the over-rigid application of the rules to block any availability of public information on the conduct of family law proceedings.

Research has been done in other jurisdictions where family courts have been open to the media, such as in Australia and Scotland. Recommendations made by Dr. Coulter in 2007 referred to the need to have some statutory reform beyond the 2004 Act to ensure we have a regime in Ireland closer to that in other jurisdictions where reporting is permitted, such as that used in Canada, Australia or New Zealand, or similar to that operating in Ireland with regard to sex offence cases where reporting is permitted but the anonymity of the complainant is preserved and the identity protected. The work on family law courts in the pilot project has certainly given us more information and the recommendations produced in 2007 are very important.

The child care reporting project has also been launched and will be led by Dr. Carol Coulter. The website will be launched next week. This should give us some information on the operation of the courts which make orders under the Child Care Act, and the idea is that the pilot project will publish reports on the nature and outcomes of child care proceedings while preserving the anonymity of the children and their families.

All of these developments are very welcome. Others, particularly Senator Conway, referred to the Minister's expertise and I learned family law from his text. I am very familiar with it. It is very important that somebody with such direct practical and expert experience would be engaged in making these reforms.

Senator van Turnhout set out very practical questions on the operation of the Bill, particularly whether there is a route for appeal where a party to proceedings has objected to the presence in court of the bona fide representatives of the press. This is a practical issue which may well need to be teased out. My suspicion, or intuition, is that judges would take a relatively conservative approach whereby if objections are raised and they are reasonable, they will be listened to and upheld by judges. We will see quite restrictive reporting, particularly in the initial period, and this may well be the right way to approach this. I also concur with Senator van Turnhout on the need for specialised training, having worked in a small way in the child care courts myself as a legal practitioner. People tend to learn on the job, which is not ideal, but there are some superb and highly-experienced people working as guardians ad litemwho bring a great deal of necessary expertise and experience to the courts and whose input informs the work of these courts.

The Bill is part of a more general court reform process and reference has already been made to the reforms planned for family courts and the greater emphasis on mediation. The Minister has set out plans to bring forward a referendum to reform the court structures. I wish to make a plea for the need to establish a proper basis for the Court of Criminal Appeal. Its current operation is characterised by long delays in the system whereby appeals are often heard when sentences have expired. There is also inconsistency in the make-up of the court as no permanent judges have been assigned. Attempts are being made to address this which are very welcome.

With regard to the more general reforms I welcome, as others have done, the announcements made by the Minister that an amendment will be tabled to deal with the issue of legal representation in the Coroners Court. This is very important and I am glad to see the Minister will do it. I thank him for outlining in advance to us the amendment he proposes to make on Committee Stage which we will discuss in more detail then.

To turn to the other part of the Bill, which deals with the increase in monetary jurisdiction of the Circuit Court and the District Court, none of us would disagree with what the Minister stated about the practical need to raise these limits. Previous raises envisaged were never brought into operation so clearly this is overdue. This is an opportunity to look at jurisdiction more generally, particularly in the District Court on the criminal side. I have often thought we need to examine in more detail the way in which we have considered the various incarceration periods. With regard to the monetary jurisdiction on the civil side of the District Court, very careful consideration has been given to the raises in the monetary level which should be introduced and, as the Minister stated, an argument is to be made for keeping it under regular review. However, we have not had the same detailed consideration given to the sentencing jurisdiction of the District Court.

I have always thought, as somebody who started practising in the District Court as a criminal practitioner many years ago, that the 12-month sentence limit and the 24-month limit for more than one sentence are very high. Anyone sentenced to three or four weeks in prison would regard it as a significant imposition on his or her liberty. To deprive a person of his or her liberty for up to 24 months is a significant invasion of a person's constitutional right to liberty. It is worth examining again whether it is appropriate the District Court has the power to sentence. Should we consider reducing the jurisdiction of the District Court in terms of sentence length for criminal offences? It should come under any detailed consideration of jurisdiction.

I also ask this in light of the report the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality published today. Senators O'Donovan and Conway were involved in this along with Senator Zappone and I and Members of the Dáil under the chairmanship of Deputy David Stanton. The report recommends the Government adopt a decarceration strategy and examine reducing prison numbers, particularly in respect of those committed to prison for non-violent offences, and that we examine particularly the purpose of sentencing people to prison for six months or less. We heard extensive evidence from various stakeholders who came before the committee that there is very little opportunity for rehabilitation if somebody is sentenced to a short sentence and released in an unstructured way. We believe that where possible, people should instead be directed to carry out periods of community service. The report is highly supportive of the community return programme being operated by the Prison Service and the Probation Service. The Department of Justice and Equality supplied us with very impressive figures on the results of this programme and information on the very positive engagement, with many people released early from prison directed to serve out the remainder of the sentence in the community under the supervision of the Probation Service. This seemed to us to be a very enlightened and more effective way to achieve rehabilitation of offenders and reduce recidivism rates.

We have made a series of recommendations which we will pass on to the Minister, particularly on remission, which focus on reducing the use of imprisonment and emphasising non-custodial alternatives with more genuine reform and rehabilitation potential. It is in this context I ask that we re-examine the jurisdiction of the District Court. I apologise for going slightly off the point of Bill but it is an opportunity to discuss this issue. Some of the amendments being tabled on Committee Stage are also rather tangential to the direct purpose of the Bill and it might be worth examining the issue of jurisdiction also.