Domestic Violence Judgments Register Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-25
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Laura Harmon (LAB), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I move amendment No. 3:
In page 4, to delete line 11 and substitute the following:
“(b) the date of birth of the convicted person;”.
I want to speak to amendments Nos. 3 and 4 together. From the outset, I want to make clear that this is a very important Bill that has the full support of the Labour Party. We need to make sure that it is watertight and operates as intended. That is why we have tabled these amendments.
We believe that there is a real risk of misidentification in the proposed register and we aim to counteract that. Currently, the register relies solely on names and approximate ages. As the Bill is currently drafted, a judgment to be included in the register will contain the name of the convicted person, the age of the convicted person where available and, subject to the court's discretion and where available, the residential address. This combination of name, age and discretionary address is the complete identification framework currently proposed. We believe that there is a real risk of misidentification as part of this. Ireland has a relatively small population and a heavily concentrated surname distribution, in particular in large urban areas such as Dublin, so combining a common surname with a common first name, for example, John Murphy or Seán Kelly, and a birth year would produce a non-trivial probability of multiple matches. The register is public facing and also Internet searchable. There is no unique identifier such as a PPS number, date of birth or physical description in the mandatory fields.
We raise this issue only because this Bill is so important. We cannot let the risk of misidentification get in the way of an entirely worthy aim of empowering people to protect themselves from domestic abusers in their lives. We need to get this right.
Amendment No. 3 would require the inclusion of the date of birth of the convicted person to be included in the register of judgments in all cases. Currently, the Bill only requires that the judgment include the age of the convicted person, where available. A person sharing a name and approximate age with a registrant could be misidentified by employers, landlords, neighbours or partners consulting the public register. We believe that the inclusion of a date of birth in all cases would be an important step in disambiguating the names on the register. It is a simple step but one we believe is essential.
I want to speak to amendment No. 4, which is proposed by the Labour Party. Amendment No. 4 states:
In page 4, between lines 13 and 14, to insert the following:
“(ca) the record number assigned to the proceedings by the court;”.
This amendment would require the publication of the court record number for proceedings in which a person was convicted to be published on the register. Again, this is for the purposes of disambiguation and would allow anyone to request the underlying judgment for verification and for it to be made available. We believe that this is a commonsense step that would help to substantially mitigate any risk of misidentification. The principle here is the same one that underlies the Bill itself, namely, transparency. If a person consulting the register is empowered in this way to request access to court records, the risk of someone being wrongly identified falls significantly. That, of course, protects the individual who may be misidentified, but it also strengthens trust in the register itself. It is important that the public have trust in this register, which is what we should all be aiming for in pushing this legislation forward. I hope that the Minister can accept the amendments.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25