Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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704. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality further to Parliamentary Question No. 453 of 10 October 2021, the reason a proposed review of an error in a case involving the non-processing of an appeal from a District Court conviction in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, a submission for which was approved by her on 15 May 2019, did not ultimately proceed. [51067/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I can inform the Deputy that, as noted in my previous response, the matter raised refers to the terms of reference for a proposed review of an error in a case involving the non-processing of an appeal from a District Court conviction in Carrickmacross. A submission on the review was received by the then Minister for Justice and Equality from the Department's Secretary General on 14 May 2018. This submission was subsequently approved by the then Minister on 15 May 2019. As previously stated, the review in question did not ultimately proceed. The failure to follow up on this decision was due to an administrative oversight.

As previously stated to the Deputy, it was also intended that the O’Farrell family would be sent a copy of the terms of reference for the review, as well as a copy of the original Courts Service report. However, due to the same administrative oversight, this did not occur.

These matters came to light in the process of compiling records for a Freedom of Information request. Following consideration of the matter, it was decided that the most efficient and expedient way of dealing with this oversight was to bring the matter to the attention of Judge Haughton, who had already commenced his independent scoping exercise into matters relating to the death of Mr Shane O'Farrell in February 2019. In response to a request, Judge Haughton agreed that the matter referred to in the Courts Service report could be dealt with in the context of his scoping exercise.