Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to support this Bill as tabled by Senator Martin and of course reiterate the support of my party, Fianna Fáil, for the Bill.The legislation is very appropriate. We have a relatively new criminal offence of coercive control on the Statute Book and the law in terms of protection of victims in terms of the core process has not yet caught up. This Bill is trying to bridge that gap. I am very happy to support the Bill and I commend Senator Martin for bringing it forward to the House.

While we have the opportunity, it does allow us to discuss issues pertaining to domestic violence, violence against women and sexual crimes. The article in the Irish Examineraround court delays has been referred to. It is quite obvious that we do not have enough judges to deal with the case work that is coming through. The Minister of State will be very aware of the saying that justice delayed is justice denied, so for the predominantly women who are waiting for months on end to get to court it is a very precarious position to be in for starters. It is a very traumatising position to be in and it exacerbates the situation so we need to deal with the significant delays in the court process.

I want to flag another issue with the Minister of State. I will be cautious in how I speak about this issue and will not put any particular names on the record. We are all very aware that in recent times there is a particular judge who has come to the attention of the public. I will not say the judge's name but we all know who I am speaking about. It has raised particular concerns over what appears to be extremely lenient sentences when it comes to violent crimes, often sexually motivated crimes, perpetrated by men against women. Many of these convicted criminals are getting suspended sentences or very light sentences and mitigating factors are being cited by a particular judge as the reason the sentence is so lenient. Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has been quite strong on this issue. She hit the nail on the head when she said that justice does not appear to have been done in these cases. If we look at the number of cases that are in the category I referred to where the sentences appear to be very lenient. There was a recent case. If I speak about the case detail I will identify the person. The crime was severe and the assault perpetrated against the woman was appalling. I can only imagine the lifelong trauma she will endure.One of the perpetrators walked out of court with a suspended sentence and did not look in any way sorrowful about his crimes.

Work was done previously on having a sentencing database so we could see if there was some sort of pattern. We do not have enough data currently to know whether a judge is operating in isolation or whether his or her decisions are the norm and in step with those of other judges. We do not know whether there is a pattern because we do not have the information or data. My request to the Minister of State on this issue is that we re-start the work on establishing a sentencing database so we can have transparency for citizens on the types of sentences handed down for crimes, particularly those against women.