Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 497: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when and the way he plans to introduce sentencing guidelines; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18421/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy may know, a very significant step in the area of sentencing was the decision by the Board of the Courts Service to establish a Steering Committee to plan for and provide a sentencing information system. The Committee, which is composed of four members of the Judiciary and an academic expert, reviewed systems of this nature around the world and decided to establish a pilot project in the Circuit Court in Dublin. I understand that two researchers have begun to collect and collate information on sentencing outcomes in cases on indictment in designated courts in accordance with criteria specified by the Committee.

The objectives of the project are to:

identify criteria and other information employed by the judiciary in sentencing for particular offence types in criminal proceedings

record and retrieve such information in individual cases,

design and develop a database to store the information retrieved and enable its retrieval in accordance with various search criteria

share or disseminate the information, utilising information and communications technology, via a judges' intranet or other means, and assemble appropriate material on sentencing for a benchbook and website.

The work of the committee is still underway and I look forward to seeing the outcome of the research, which should greatly assist in considering the matter further.