Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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132. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the timeline for introducing legislation to expand community sanctions and to implement electronic monitoring, as committed to in the Programme for Government. [21484/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I am committed to progressing and implementing policies aimed at increasing the use of community sanctions, reducing offending, diverting people away from the criminal justice system, and providing effective rehabilitation.

I will very shortly be seeking Government approval for the drafting of the Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions Bill) 2025. The Scheme includes a range of measures which, if approved by Government, will bring welcome changes across a range of areas, improving operational capacity in our prisons and bolstering sentencing options to reduce reliance on custodial sentences.

This includes a number of proposed amendments to the Community Service Act 1983 to encourage greater use of community service orders, thereby helping to divert people from prison.

At present, a judge is obliged to consider imposing a community service order if otherwise considering a custodial sentence of up to 12 months’ imprisonment. I am proposing this threshold be increased from 12 to 24 months.

I am also proposing to double from 240 to 480 the maximum community service hours that may be ordered.

The Programme for Government also commits to implement electronic tagging for appropriate categories of offender, and work is underway to achieve this with the commencement of a project to examine how electronic monitoring can be brought into use in line with existing legislative provisions.

A steering group is in place, made up of sectoral representatives, who will be involved in the delivery, and work has started on scoping out the practical operational considerations, including the technology to be used for relevant categories of offender to inform next steps.