Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 431 and 433 together.

The Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023 (the “2023 Act”) completed its passage through the Oireachtas and was signed into law by the President on 19 July 2023.

The 2023 Act contains several important provisions with regard to stalking. These include:

• A new stalking offence, defined in terms of causing either a fear of violence or serious alarm and distress that has a substantial impact on a person’s day-to-day activities.
• The existing harassment offence in section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 has been widened to include any persistent conduct that seriously interferes with a person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm, distress, or harm.
• Expanded protections for victims in both the criminal and civil processes, including restrictions on the publication of the victim’s identity, restrictions on cross-examination in person by the accused, the ability to give evidence via video-link, or to give evidence from behind a screen.
• The introduction of a new system of civil orders designed to prevent stalking and protect victims.

Both the harassment and stalking offences, and the new civil order system, use an open definition of the kinds of conduct that can constitute the offence. While an illustrative list of behaviours is included, the offence is flexible enough to cover any form of conduct.

A post-enactment report of the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023 is at the preliminary stage, with an anticipated completion date of end Quarter 3, 2026. The report will include a review of the provisions relating to stalking.

It should be noted with regard to prosecutions, that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decides whether or not someone should be prosecuted, and for what crime. The Minister has no role in the operations, functions, oversight or governance of the Office of the DPP and is unable to provide any information or statistics relating to its work as a result.

Similarly, data surrounding conviction numbers is a matter for the courts. The management of the courts, operational matters and logistical functions are the responsibility of the judiciary and Courts Service, which are independent in their functions under the Courts Service Act 1998 and the Constitution. The Department does not record data relating to sentencing and/or convictions.

The Courts Service has a dedicated email address for the provision of information to members of the Houses of the Oireachtas: oireachtasenquiries@courts.ie.

To be of assistance, I have contacted the Courts Service who have supplied the following data, a report on the number of orders, the number of offences and the number of persons where convictions have been imposed in the District Court/District Court Appeals for the period 1 November 2023 to 28 February 2026 under Section 10(2) and (9) of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 (as substituted by Section 23 of the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023), along with the below qualifiers.

Note 1: The Courts Service can only provide data in relation to where offence codes provided on the system were used by prosecutors. Prosecutors may have used uncoded free text offences and any such offences would not be included in the data provided. The offence code is only available since December 2024.

Note 2: This offence can be sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court At this time, the system in use by the Courts Service in the Circuit Courts cannot produce reports for specific offences.

Year	No of Orders	No of Offences	No of Persons
01 Nov 2023- 31 Dec 2023 (See Note 1 above)	0	0	0
01 Jan 2024 - 31 Dec 2024 (See Note 1 above)	0	0	0
01 Jan 2025 - 31 Dec 2025	2	2	1
01 Jan 2026 - 28 Feb 2026	0	0	0
Total	2	2	1