Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, to the House. I also welcome the opportunity to debate this important Bill with him, which the Labour Party supports. As said by other speakers, this Bill is long overdue but nonetheless it is extremely welcome. It represents an increasing move towards recognition of victims' rights in our criminal justice system, which is a welcome development.

Others have spoken about the origins of the victims' rights movement in Ireland and the role played in this regard by Derek Nally and many voluntary organisations and NGOs, which the Minister of State acknowledged in his contribution is hugely important to mention. We have now moved to a point where victims' rights need to be enshrined in statutory format. For this reason, this legislation is important.

At this point I should declare an interest having researched in the past and published on victims' rights in the rape law process, in particular the rape trial process in 1988, and more recently with colleagues in Trinity College around victims supports more generally, one of the findings of which was the difficulty in terms of accessing services for victims on a practical basis across Ireland. Given much of the service provision in this areas has been traditionally provided by voluntary groups, the service is rather patchy. The increases in funding mentioned by the Minister of State are welcome. While the picture in this area has improved considerably in recent times there has been a difficulty over many years in accessing victim supports, including for court accompaniment which is time intensive and in many cases is undertaken by members of local rape crisis networks and so on. These services, where provided, have been very important. As I said, the difficulty has been a lack of consistency in their provision nationally.

We know from the work done by NGOs and academics on victims' rights, particularly in our own system, that there are three serious difficulties that have arisen. This Bill seeks to address those difficulties. The first is a lack of information for victims within the process. This is the key issue which the Bill will address significantly. I know from the rape study in which I was involved that victims felt excluded not only from decision making because the DPP must exercise decisions independently and impartially, but from information in regard to how a process is unfolding, why a prosecution is not being taken or why an offence reported as rape is being prosecuted as a sexual assault. This type of information has all too frequently been lacking and unavailable to victims and they felt excluded as a result.

The second difficulty is the victim's lack of voice in terms of putting forward his or her own perspective. Within our system, the victim is a witness for the prosecution and no more than that and he or she has no entitlement to legal representation. I should point out that there is a small exception in that regard, following lobbying by the Rape Crisis Centre in the late 1990s under the Sex Offenders Act 2001, whereby a complainant in a rape trial has the right to separate legal representation where she or he is likely to be cross-examined as to prior sexual history.We have that limited entitlement to legal representation but it is in a very limited situation.

That brings me to the third difficulty, which is a bigger difficulty than this Bill could hope to address. I refer to the nature of our adversarial criminal justice system. As the Minister of State is well aware, our system differs from the system used in many continental European countries where the criminal justice process is run on an inquisitorial basis and, as a result, one sees much less forceful cross-examination of complainants or victims in the stand by counsel for the accused. The Irish system is a due process based system that has cross-examination built in. We must be conscious that research into victims' experiences in Ireland, Britain and other adversarial systems shows a serious problem. It has often been called a secondary victimisation. Individuals feel they are on trial because they have been cross-examined so aggressively, in some cases, by counsel for the defence. That is a real issue when trying to protect victims in our system and it is a much bigger issue.

In many ways, the Bill seeks to address not just the lack of information and lack of voice but the more detrimental aspects of the adversarial system for the victim, which is welcome.

Section 6 deals with the right to receive information at the first point of contact, which is welcome. Senator Boyhan raised an issue that the Victims' Rights Alliance has raised with many of us, namely, the fact that currently the Bill appears to only apply to the Garda Ombudsman Commission. There are other prosecuting bodies like the Health and Safety Authority. I know this matter has been raised in the Dáil. I ask that other bodies with the statutory authority to prosecute are included within the remit of the Bill. The directive appears to envisage that they might be.

Section 8 is hugely important because victims will now receive information from the Garda or the Director of Public Prosecutions on a decision not to prosecute. The DPP had operating that for some offences, although on an informal basis. It is a hugely important measure for victims.

I refer sections 13 to 16, inclusive, on the way the Garda conduct interviews with victims. These are very useful and important provisions. It must be recognised, and perhaps it is absent from them, the fact these victim interviews, as they are referred to, in practice in the Irish system will, in many cases, form the basis on which individuals or the accused persons are prosecuted. The statements will enter the book of evidence. If there are a number of statements or interviews with the victims, as envisaged by these sections, and frequently in practice there are a number of interviews, discrepancies between the statements that arise from the interviews will be picked apart during cross-examination by the defence. We need to be cognisant of the fact that in our system victim interviews are hugely important as a basis for prosecution and as a basis on which victims will be cross-examined later in court. Perhaps the provisions that stem from the directive do not quite take that fact into account. I know we will have time to tease out these issues in more detail on Committee Stage.

Sections 18 and 20 are welcome and they refer to a court having discretion where a victim is questioned about his or her private life. How do we square that with the current rights of the accused to question a victim on prior sexual history? We have tried to protect victims by building in protections in the legislation. However, we have seen aggressive questioning on sexual history. It is a very unpleasant secondary victimisation for complainants in sex offence trials and deters people from making allegations. We must consider how these important measures will affect the criminal justice practice based on our own model.

I refer to the resource implications, which others have mentioned. Resources are a huge issue. The Bill rightly envisages that there will be a significant additional implications for the Garda and DPP's office as witnesses and victims will have formal rights vis-à-visthe Garda. We need to ensure the Garda is fully resourced to do so. We need to address the Garda Inspectorate's report. The Minister of State is a former Chair of the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality. Senator Martin Conway and I were also members of that committee. Therefore, I know that the Garda Inspectorate met the committee to discuss its very comprehensive 2015 report. On that occasion, it identified serious concerns about the recording and investigation of offences by the Garda, and about attrition in domestic violence, which was a point that was picked up by Professor Evan Stark during his recent visit to Ireland. Also, the misrecording of offences, and the difficulties and failings in the Garda prosecution and investigation of individual criminal offences. We must be mindful of resource implications. I would like to know when the Bill will be commenced because one must be clear that enough resources are in place before it is enacted. Section 1 envisages that the legislation will come into effect on being commenced. Clearly, the legislation must pass through the Houses first. When is it proposed that the legislation will come into force?