Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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603. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the reason she has not signed the commencement order for sections 11,12 and 13 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007; the recommendations of the project board, led by the Probation Service, which in 2009 examined the implementation of electronic monitoring; if any concerns raised with regard to the operation of these sections were identified, and if so, if such concerns were relayed to the Law Reform Commission in advance of its review of the Act, which was published in 2014; the way in which the provisions regarding electronic tagging in the proposed bail Bill will differ from those within the Act; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38371/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Sections 11, 12 and 13 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007 provide for the introduction of electronic monitoring as a condition of bail at the discretion of the court. However, due to issues relating to the operational effectiveness of untargeted electronic monitoring, these provisions have not been commenced.

Experience in other jurisdictions has shown that electronic monitoring has significant limitations. For example, the report on the Scottish pilot of electronic monitoring as a condition of bail found that neither the aims of increasing public safety perceptions nor reducing the custodial remand population had been achieved in any significant way. The report also found electronic monitoring for persons on bail to be more expensive than custodial remand and in the circumstances it was decided not to introduce electronic monitoring on a national basis in Scotland in connection with the granting of bail.

The Deputy will appreciate that, in the overall context, electronic monitoring would not stop a person on bail committing a serious offence and, in addition, the equipment that would be used can be subject to technical failures or blind spots. As it is not feasible to monitor live the movements of a large number of persons, jurisdictions are primarily compelled to use historical data rather than live data to monitor compliance with electronic monitoring. Furthermore, the equipment can be removed or disabled, which may register as a breach of conditions but it also means that the person will be unmonitored at that stage.

While, as I have indicated, there are issues involved in relation to electronic monitoring, I believe that it has the potential to be effective as a means of enhancing compliance with bail conditions in appropriate cases. For this reason, I will be bringing forward streamlined proposals for electronic monitoring in the new Bail Bill, which is being drafted on a priority basis with a view to its publication in the current parliamentary session. The Bail Bill will provide that electronic monitoring may be imposed as a bail condition if the prosecution applies to the court for such a condition. This will facilitate the focused and targeted use of electronic monitoring for persons on bail.

In 2009, a project group was established to examine the potential to use electronic monitoring in the management of offenders. Having considered the experience in other jurisdictions of the monitoring of persons on bail, the project group recommended that electronic monitoring for such persons should not be introduced until a programme was in place for electronic monitoring of prisoners granted early release. Given the operational limitations involved, electronic monitoring has been used in relation to a relatively small number of these prisoners.

In 2014, the Law Reform Commission published an administrative consolidation of the Criminal Justice Act 2007 to take account of the amendments made to the Act. In the course of this exercise the Commission did not undertake a review of the operation of the 2007 Act.