Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and commend Senators Colm Burke, Marie-Louise O'Donnell and Ruane on proposing this important Bill. In particular, I commend Senator Colm Burke who has worked on this issue for a good deal of time. It is good to see this Bill come before the House on this agreed basis. I echo Senator Ruane's comments that it is a sign of the Seanad at its best when we work together in a consensual manner to bring forward important legislation such as this on which a great deal of work has been done.

Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell put it succinctly, stating this Bill would set out a clear pathway for the families of missing persons and for dealing with the civil status of missing persons. Clearly, this is an issue that is devastating for many families and we all need to acknowledge that.

In 2012, the then Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, of which I was a member, conducted a hearing on the issue of missing persons and published a report. At the public hearing that committee held on 28 March 2012, it was really very affecting to hear about the deep trauma and the devastation suffered by so many as a result of individuals and family members going missing. We heard from a number of organisations which are involved in searching for missing persons. We heard poignant and compelling testimony from Search and Rescue Dog Association, the missing persons helpline, Mountain Rescue Ireland and others.

One of our recommendations was that we would have a national missing persons day, which we have had since 2013 on the first Wednesday in December. That is an important symbolic way of recognising the trauma and devastation for families and the fact we have significant numbers of persons going missing. Others have quoted figures on that. Certainly, when we were compiling our report, we noted that in the previous five years there had been 40,000 reports of missing persons to An Garda Síochána, the vast majority of which, happily, as we acknowledged, were resolved and persons were found safe and well within 24 hours. Nonetheless, there are a small but significant number of persons who remain missing and that is really what this Bill seeks to address.

Others have pointed out that the Bill is very much based on the Law Reform Commission recommendations. The report of the commission in 2013 included a draft Bill. It pointed out the need to establish a statutory framework for the making of a presumption of death order that would be a less cumbersome process in respect of the two categories of missing persons, both where the circumstances of the disappearance indicate that death is virtually certain and where the circumstances and length of disappearance indicate it is highly probably the missing person has died and will not return. I echo the words of others that it is important the application would now be made under this proposed framework in the Circuit Court rather than in the High Court to keep costs down and to ensure easier access to the courts and, significantly, fewer delays.

It is an eminently sensible Bill. The groundwork has clearly been laid for the Bill. There is a broad consensus in support for the Bill and I would like to add the support of the Labour Party to that of others who have supported the Bill.

We at the justice committee also heard from an impressive group of transition year students from Davis College in Mallow in Cork who had run, as a transition year project, a forget-me-not campaign to acknowledge and raise awareness of the issue of missing persons in Ireland. They had a visual presentation that really affected all of us on the committee at the time and made a powerful impression in terms of the impact that persons going missing has on families and communities. That is something that stayed with me.

I commend Senator Colm Burke on his great work in doing this. I commend the Minister on supporting the Bill and all the other colleagues who have expressed such strong support for it.