Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House and apologise for being late to the session. I was actually speaking to Alicia O'Sullivan and Jennifer O'Connell about the issue I raised in the House earlier today about Coco's Law. I wish first to speak on Second Stage of the Criminal Procedure Bill before us but also, briefly, if I may, to refer again to some comments on Coco's Law and other relevant legal reforms.

First, on behalf of the Labour Party, I very much welcome the Criminal Procedure Bill and the provision it makes, indeed its principal purpose, to legislate for preliminary trial hearings. These have been recommended over many years by many different reports and reviews of the criminal justice system. As long ago as 1998, in an EU-funded study I conducted with colleagues in Trinity College Dublin on the legal process and victims of rape, we recommended that pre-trial hearings be brought in to ensure that issues with the conduct of the trial would be dealt with in a way that would least impact the victims and indeed the jurors. It is very welcome then to see that that is what is proposed in this legislation. It is welcome also to see in section 6 that the interests of the victims as well as jurors are recognised. I note also that this will make trial processes more efficient.

My colleague, Deputy Howlin, in the other House, also welcoming this Bill, referred to an important study into judges and juries in Ireland conducted last year by Mark Coen, Niamh Howlin, Colette Barry and John Lynch for the UCD school of law. It was the first empirical study in which judges were interviewed. On the issue of pre-trial hearings, which they also recommended, the authors noted the frustrations judges expressed about lack of progress on the introduction of pre-trial hearings, one judge saying they believed it was very disrespectful of a jury to be sworn in and then sent away for long periods while issues were resolved in the absence of a jury, as is currently the case. I recall several trials when I was in practice in which the juries were sworn in and then the voir direswere held and legal argument took place in the absence of the jury, often for days at a time. The juries would then be left in a state of suspension. Clearly, that is not ideal for jurors or victims, who are also often left wondering what is going on. I therefore very much welcome the provision for pre-trial hearings in this legislation.

I also wish again to commend the Minister for her work with Deputy Howlin on Coco's Law. I ask again, however, that we look again, in the light of the experience of a young UCC law student, Alicia O'Sullivan, as recounted at the weekend, at how gardaí who take complaints, particularly complaints relating to sexual abuse, including image-based sexual abuse, are trained to respond in an empathetic manner and then to refer to the divisional protective services unit. I pay tribute to Chief Superintendent Declan Daly who has overseen the important roll-out of specialist units within An Garda Síochána across the country to take statements where gender-based violence or sexual crimes are reported. I think what is lacking still, however, is sufficient training of gardaí on the front line in Garda stations who take these complaints in the first place. They should be able to refer them swiftly onwards to gardaí who are specialised in taking statements. This will facilitate, I think, more efficient prosecution and investigation of such offences.

I also wish to raise with the Minister a related issue regarding criminal justice reform raised earlier on "Morning Ireland" by two very brave young women, Una Ring and Eve McDowell, who, like Alicia O'Sullivan, have gone public about their experience, in their case experience of very serious and life-threatening stalking.Their concern is that our current legislation does not adequately deal with stalking of this sort of violent nature. They suggested that section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, which provides for the offence of harassment, does not adequately deal with the sort of physical violence that they experienced in stalking, and it appears more reflective perhaps of persistent communication through non-physical means. While we did increase the penalty to ten years in section 10 of Coco's Law for the offence of harassment, I wonder if it is time for us to look at creating an offence of aggravated harassment that would more directly encompass this sort of stalking, where people are followed at their workplace or to their home, or their property is broken into, and where there is a physical threatening presence that causes them to fear for their lives, as recounted by the two women who spoke.

Perhaps we need to look more generally at how our criminal laws reflect the experience of victims. This Criminal Procedure Bill goes a substantial way towards recognising the needs of victims and trying to make the trial processes more efficient, but we also need to look at our language more generally. Why do we not have an offence known as stalking? Why do we not have an offence of domestic violence? Why do we use language that does not necessarily reflect the experience of victims by talking about harassment, which does not seem to encompass the more serious type of behaviour? We need to name these experiences. Back in 2018, when we passed the Domestic Violence Act, pioneered so ably by the Minister's predecessor, the former Minister, Frances Fitzgerald, through our work in the Seanad and the Dáil we created a new offence of coercive control. That language more accurately reflects the experience of those who go through what we now know to be coercive control. Similarly, while I am very glad we have a Domestic Violence Act, we still do not have an offence of domestic violence, just as we do not have an offence called child sexual abuse. I have spoken before about the myriad of different sexual offences and the piecemeal nature of reforming legislation brought through the House. I should say I acted for the State years ago in cases defending some aspects of those pieces of legislation. It is a real source of frustration to anyone involved in supporting victims of sexual crime or gender-based violence that the legislation and the law does not seem to quite match the experience of victims. It is about looking at our language. It is a little bit like our outdated criminal law still talking about a defence of insanity, when insanity is now seen as a deeply problematic and outdated expression in mental health and psychiatry practice. It is about looking at our language and about ensuring that the offences we create are reflective of the experience of victims. I know the Minister is very sympathetic to these views. I wonder, then, whether we should be looking at that offence of harassment and how we can align it more with the experiences of those who have suffered the sort of very severe, physically threatening stalking behaviours that have been recounted.

Like others on today's Order of Business, I want to finish by saying again that gender-based violence is very much in all of our minds today, with the news of the tragic killing at the weekend of Jennifer Poole. I want to extend my own sympathy and the sympathies of my Labour Party colleagues to her family and friends and all who knew her.

I welcome the Bill and welcome the way in which it is framed so as to create a more responsive criminal justice and trial system. However, there are other reforms that we also need to look at.