Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

The reason the 2017 statutory regime did not work is because it provided for a waiver. Senator Higgins refers to it as me now removing agency, but the reason the waiver made the scheme non-workable was because many people - complainants in sexual abuse or rape trials - were told they did not want to go through an interlocutory preliminary hearing to have an assessment as to whether the counselling notes should be handed over and that they should just hand them over. There is a provision under the legislation. I think it was subsection (19), whereby someone could just waive their rights and the notes could be handed over. What was happening, understandably, was that people who wanted to get their trials on as quickly as possible decided that they would hand them over.
Unfortunately, I cannot do both. If I am going to retain a statutory provision that provides for a waiver, we are going to have the same problem as we had before.
What is happening now will put more pressure on the prosecution and, indeed, on the defence. There will have to be a hearing in respect of the applicable records. A judge will look at these and will only decide to disclose them where there is something relevant for the purposes of ensuring a fair trial and in the interests of justice. It will reduce the number of applications. The statutory scheme will make it much fairer.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24