Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----but also a person tried summarily indicating a minor offence may elect a trial by jury which brings them into this penalty range. That is an important point. The reasons are as I have outlined. To extrapolate from the approach we have taken in this part of the legislation and to suggest that the Government is not putting the best interests of the child first, in a week when the Child and Family Relationships Act has come into effect - where the best interests of the child have to be the paramount consideration when making decisions about guardianship, access, custody and maintenance - and given the work that has been done on the children's referendum, which gives the individual child rights and which protects children in long-term care so that better decisions are taken for them in terms of adoption, and given that we have passed the Marriage Equality Bill 2015 which protects children who are living with same sex couples, I certainly cannot accept what the Senator has had to say in regard to children and the approach of this Government to protecting children's rights. I have given the reasons we are including a fine or imprisonment for this offence. It is in line with the approach taken to all serious offences, apart from murder, where we leave it to the discretion of the court to examine individual cases and look at the individual circumstances. To extrapolate beyond that and suggest that in some way there is an ambivalence about people who would exploit children is incorrect.