Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State on the passage of this Bill through the Dáil and its progress to the Seanad. It is good legislation and we give our full support to it.

The sex offenders register can often be misinterpreted by the public. People imagine it should be publicly available without understanding that while it ensures the Garda has information about who is living in certain areas, where they are and how to monitor them, there is also a rehabilitative element to it. Scholarly articles look at recidivism rates and, to be fair, sexual offences do not have the highest recidivism rates; drugs offences and other areas do. According to different scholarly articles I have looked at, after three years 5% of sexual offenders will have reoffended and after 15 years, 24% will have. The corollary of that is that after three years 95% have not reoffended and after 15 years, 76% have not reoffended. That is to put a balance on it. It is important that we have a register and one of the most significant parts of this is that the Garda now has discretion to inform people when necessary. We have seen cases in which that was not possible. Unfortunately it is too late to hear that someone had a history of offences of a particular nature after a crime has been perpetrated, especially of the serious nature we have seen in recent years.

I find the provision that those on the sex offenders register cannot work with children to be a little peculiar as an element of this Bill. It is almost a duplication. How does this enhance the law? The National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 clearly states that people must be vetted before they can work with children and vulnerable adults, which should always throw up to an employer, a sports, volunteering or youth group or in other such contexts, if someone has offended. Perhaps I am answering my own question as I speak. This Bill creates the prohibition, whereas the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 creates the notification. I understand that. The National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act obliges employers to have a response in policy, which is quite challenging. Therefore when a disclosure of a sexual offence comes through, we now have a clear-cut statutory provision and not a varying response. People who have been convicted of a sexual offence cannot work with children. Employers must have a response for other areas of offences in order not to fall foul of the Employment Equality Act. I would appreciate clarification that what I have worked out on my feet is correct. I pored over this on Sunday and thought the position was it is already on notice. That is an important piece.

I echo my colleagues' comments regarding a pattern in sentencing at times. While I adhere to the separation of powers, I am not sure that when some high-profile cases are reported in the media, there is confidence in the public domain that sufficient respect is given to the severity of injury that arises from sexual offences. On occasion, it is almost trivialised or appears to be trivialised in the sentences handed down. In her informal roles with the National Women's Council and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, my colleague, Ms Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, has been involved in training members of the Judiciary and other legal practitioners, including barristers and solicitors, on cross-examination in these cases and in looking at the degree of trauma involved. When it comes to sentencing, sensitivity is important. If somebody is debilitated to the extent of being in a wheelchair, that is obvious to the court. A victim standing there appearing to look whole is contradictory to the internal trauma caused and to the perhaps years of disruption of life that have occurred as a consequence.

It is not in the context of this Bill, but there is a stigma in the context of the sex offenders register. That, in and of itself, serves as a type of deterrent. In that context, the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 deals with circumstances where children are coerced and groomed for criminal offences and activity. The Policing Authority's What We Heard 2022 report states that children as young as six are being engaged as drug mules and so on. I respectfully suggest that we need a register for sexual offenders and groomers in order to elevate the grooming of children for any purposes, whether for sexual offences, which are horrific, or where a child is groomed as a drug mule, then perhaps loses a package and finds themselves in debt. There is a cycle of drug debt that leads to all sorts of obligations on people to behave in particular ways and then to be sexually exploited. Establishing a register in this regard would not be a very far reach. We need a higher lifelong stigma attached to grooming children. In the context of the other Bill to which I refer, something like that needs to be put in place. Because of the misunderstanding of the sex offenders register, we need an information campaign at the end of this as to how good the legislation before us is.