Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 218: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform his plans to legislate for a new offence of supplying and administering date rape drugs. [40085/08]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government 2007- 2012 contains a commitment to create a new offence of supplying and administering 'date rape' drugs. This is an issue which I regard with the utmost seriousness and it is therefore currently being given very careful consideration in my Department in the context of existing provisions in the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997. Section 12 of that Act already makes it an offence for a person to intentionally or recklessly administer to, or cause another to take, a substance which he or she knows to be capable of interfering substantially with the other person's bodily functions and where he or she knows the person does not consent to what is being done. Section 12(2) provides that a substance capable of inducing unconsciousness or sleep is capable of interfering substantially with bodily functions.