Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister for Justice and Equality come to the House to explain why the Government has failed to enact the Corporate Manslaughter (No. 2) Bill 2016 as was proposed and debated by us, as was proposed in the previous Seanad and voted down by the previous Fine Gael-Labour Government and is now not the law of the land. I raised this on Wednesday with regard to the ongoing scandal surrounding cervical cancer checks. Having watched the proceedings of the Oireachtas Committee on Health yesterday, it was a debacle of mismanagement. A debacle is one thing but what they have actually done is kill people. This, unfortunately, is the reality. Every person before the committee, bar one, was a man. They were sorry but there will be no consequences for their mismanagement and failure to act. I again ask why the offence of grossly negligent management causing death is not a law of the land. Section 3(1) of the Bill states:

(1) Where an undertaking has been convicted of corporate manslaughter and a high managerial agent of the convicted undertaking—(a) knew or ought to reasonably have known of a substantial risk of death or serious personal harm,

(b) failed to take reasonable efforts to eliminate that risk,

(c) that failure fell far below what could reasonably be expected in the circumstances, and

(d) that failure contributed to the commission of the corporate offence,that agent shall be guilty of an offence called "grossly negligent management causing death".

If we had managed to pass that legislation, the penalty for that offence would be 12 years in jail. Never mind the advisers to Government and the people who came in here with the Minister for Justice and Equality at the time and said there was no need for section 3, we will be back here in a year's time and see who was convicted. Nobody will have been convicted, however, because the Law Reform Commission has said that as a result of the hepatitis C scandal and the fact that nobody was convicted arising from that, there is a gap in our law. No legislation has been put in place since, and this was confirmed by the Law Reform Commission, that has managed to plug that gap in our law so that those high managerial agents go to jail.

If the legislation was in place, we would not need any commissions or tribunals because the courts would do the job, find out the facts and convict people. People would be held accountable. The best this Government is hoping for is a bit like Siteserv - set up a commission, set up a committee and let it go away but month by month, women will die as a result of gross mismanagement causing death. Those responsible should be in jail, but unfortunately, while some women will be in their graves, the Government will not enact the Corporate Manslaughter (No. 2) Bill. If it comes back on Committee Stage, I propose that it be renamed the Corporate Womanslaughter Bill because, unfortunately, the reason for the legislation is the hepatitis C scandal where thousands of women were knowingly infected and women died.Here we are again.