Ivor Callely (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 116: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the progress to address the problem of re-offenders committing an offence while on bail; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13293/07]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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I am proposing a number of amendments to the law on bail in the Criminal Justice Bill 2007 which is currently before this House.

As the Deputy will be aware, the bail system operates under a general presumption in favour of granting bail, on the basis that the person is innocent before the law until proven guilty.

Two statutes are particularly relevant to the operation of the arrangements for bail. The Bail Act 1997 amended the bail regime generally and gave effect to the terms of the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Section 2(1) of the Act provides for the refusal of bail to a person charged with a serious offence where it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent the commission of a serious offence by that person. For this purpose a serious offence is defined as one which caries a penalty of at least 5 years imprisonment on conviction and which is listed in the Schedule to the Act (e.g. murder, manslaughter, sexual offences, drug offences). The Act was brought fully into operation on 15 May 2000.

Furthermore, the Criminal Justice Act 1984 provides that any sentence of imprisonment passed on a person for an offence committed while on bail shall be consecutive on any sentence passed on him or her for a previous offence.

Part 2 of the Criminal Justice Bill 2007, currently before this House, introduces several initiatives designed to improve the operation of the bail system and to provide the prosecution authorities with more opportunity to oppose bail applications where there is considered to be a likelihood of the applicant offending while on bail. Section 6 provides that the applicant for bail may be required to provide a statement on his or her assets and income, as well as details of criminal convictions (including convictions for any offences committed while previously on bail) and previous bail applications. Section 7 provides that a Chief Superintendent may give his or her opinion that the applicant, if given bail, is likely to commit a serious offence and that the application should therefore be refused. Sections 11 to 13 provide that a person granted bail may be subject to electronic monitoring if the bail is conditional on the person being or not being in certain places at certain specified times. Section 19 provides the prosecution with a right of appeal against the grant of bail or in respect of any conditions attaching to bail, where it is granted. Such a right is not currently available to the prosecution. This section also allows the High Court to transfer bail applications to the Circuit Court in cases where the case is triable by the Circuit Court.

The net effect of the changes being introduced by Part 2 of the Criminal Justice Bill 2007 is that the prosecution authorities will be in a position to mount a more effective challenge to bail applications where there is a likelihood of the applicant committing serious offences if given bail. These changes will help redress the balance while respecting the general presumption referred to at the outset.

The numbers of headline offences, by group, committed by persons on bail have been featured in the Garda Annual Report since 2004, copies of which are available in the Oireachtas Library. 2004 was the first year information relating to the offences committed by persons on bail was published. Comparable statistics for years prior to 2004 are not readily available and would require a disproportionate expenditure of Garda time and resources to extract the data from manual records.