Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and commend Senator Burke for taking the initiative in introducing this Bill. I am glad it will have the support of both the Minister and colleagues on all sides of the House.

All of us recognise the need to take action on this issue. Indeed, Senator Burke referred to a number of the other initiatives that have already been taken in this area. I am a member of the justice committee which produced a report on missing persons in May 2012, following a series of hearings the committee held with groups and individuals who had direct experience of the tragedy of a missing person and who had done a good deal of work on it. Senator Burke also mentioned the transition year students of Davis College, Mallow, who gave very impressive evidence to the committee. They had produced a forget-me-not calendar and had done a great deal of work on highlighting the issue of missing persons. Among a number of different ways to address this issue was a recommendation of a missing persons day, a recommendation we adopted in our report. I am glad that recommendation is being acted upon and that there will be a national missing persons day.

Members of the Law Reform Commission also appeared before the justice committee during the hearings. They had produced a consultation paper on this issue and subsequently, last January, produced a report on the civil law status of missing persons, which has greatly influenced and shaped Senator Burke's Bill.

The Bill is highly significant and a great deal of work has been done on it. It clearly deals with many procedural matters that were highlighted in the Law Reform Commission report, in particular the presumption of death order. There is a lacuna in the law in this area. Where a family member is missing, there is a difficulty in resolving the civil status of that person and the Bill would address that key issue.

Our report dealt with a number of other issues. We were not specifically considering civil status because we were conscious that the Law Reform Commission was doing work on that. We were dealing in a more general sense with the challenges and difficulties encountered in the search for missing persons. When we were conducting the hearings, we were very conscious of the numbers involved, as others have mentioned. In 2012, we were told that the number of persons reported missing to the Garda over the previous five years was 40,500. Senator Naughton referred to different categories of people who go missing. At the time, we were told that, sadly, a large number went children missing from care but, happily, the majority of them were located and found to be safe within 24 hours.

Other groups of people who go missing include those who have medical conditions and adults who wish to start a new life and do not wish to be found, which is clearly a very specific category. Reflecting on what the committee was told by gardaí and representatives of other agencies, State and voluntary, I think the Bill is applicable to adults who go missing. One of the issues we might address on Committee Stage is whether there should be a different way of treating the serious issue of children who go missing.

Apart from the recommendation on having a national missing persons day, the other recommendations we made included the establishment of a helpline for those wishing to report a missing person. I know we have had debates in this House on that issue and a good deal of work has been done on that. We also recommended enhanced co-operation between the Garda, the relevant State bodies and the recognised NGOs, and the possible involvement of mobile telephone service providers in the provision of the amber alert which people mentioned.

We also talked about the need for a public information process, which the students in Davis College had been strongly advocating. We called for this to include the delivery of a fact sheet to all homes in the State providing details of helplines. We also recommended the provision of a place of remembrance for the families of missing persons, which was recommended strongly to us by those who had had direct experience, as a way for them to mark the tragedy that had occurred in their family.

Senator Colm Burke has done a great deal of work. The presumption of death order is the critical focus of much of the Bill. It would be vital to introduce rigorous tests before a court could make that order. On Committee Stage we will need to interrogate the process for application and the test to be satisfied in an application for a presumption of death order. I know we can work on that sort of detail on Committee Stage. It is great that the Bill is approved in principle by all Members of the House.