Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-25 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I also want to speak on Part 15 of the Bill. This is an important part of the legislation that we are putting through the House today on Committee Stage. This is the part that deals with the disregard of certain historical convictions and other determinations. I also welcome Karl Hayden to the Gallery and recognise the work done by Kieran Rose, Brian Sheehan and others over the years in respect of this scheme. Similarly, many Members of the Oireachtas have been pushing this for many years. Again, I decided that I would expedite it through that great mechanism known as a "miscellaneous provisions Bill". It has been very effective in terms of getting legislation enacted that has been proposed and discussed for many years. My advice to anyone who becomes Ministers for justice in the future is to use the miscellaneous provisions Bill to get things done promptly because before they know it, they will not be Minister for justice, and their opportunity will be gone. It is extremely important that we have a disregard scheme to recognise the unfairness that was done to men since the foundation of the State in 1922 because of an inherent aspect of their personality which was their sexuality. It is important that we do this by way of a disregard scheme, which, in a way, is better than a pardon as it disregards them and recognises that they should never have been imposed in the first place. The scheme, as the Members will see, which is set out in Part 15, is complicated scheme but it allows a relatively simple procedure to operate for applications that can be made for a disregard. When this was first being considered by me in the Dáil, I thought that maybe the way to deal with it was do something like they did in the UK in respect of the miscarriage of justice that operated for those who were involved in the post office prosecutions many years ago, and that we would just introduce legislation to say that anyone convicted of the offences, which will be scheduled, should have those offences disregarded. It was then sensibly and importantly pointed out to me by officials that we have to be careful because there may been people who were convicted of such offences where there was non-consensual sexual activity. Of course, the people advocating for this would not like to see that happen because what really want to protect and disregard is those men who were involved in consensual sexual activity. For that reason, we have put in place a scheme that requires an application being made. There is a review process in it. Persons can also make applications on behalf of persons who are deceased. Once we get this enacted, and measures are starting already, we want to see this operational as quickly as possible. I am having discussions with others in respect of how we can get that done. Senator Harmon mentioned those in the military. This issue was raised with me in the Dáil and I responded to it. The first thing to respond to is the question of whether the scheme covers convictions handed down by military courts, and the answer is "Yes." The definition of "relevant conviction" or "caution" covers convictions recorded by a court of criminal or military jurisdiction. A person who was convicted by court martial of buggery, or one of the other listed offences listed in the scheme, may apply for a disregard on the same basis as a person convicted in a civilian court. However, there is another more pertinent question in respect of the military, which is why the scheme does not include the military misconduct offences recommended by the working group. Senators may be aware that the working group, which prepared a very detailed report in respect of this issue, recommended that the scheme should include certain military misconduct offences, such as disgraceful or scandalous conduct or conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline under the Defence Act 1954 and its predecessor, the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923. During the course of the discussion and consultation on the draft heads, significant legal concerns were raised about including any case in which a person was court-martialed for military misconduct. On careful consideration, I concluded that these offences could not appropriately be included, and there are two reasons for this. First, it would be legally questionable but also impracticable, especially at this remove, to attempt to determine whether a particular court martial was brought purely because of the homosexual nature of an act, rather than because it involved a disciplinary infraction, such as abuse of rank. This would equally have been the case if the act had been heterosexual in nature. Second, the relevant misconduct offences under the 1954 Act remain in force and, according to the Department of Defence, continue to be used today. Their inclusion would open the possibility for misconduct convictions right up to the present day and into the future to be relitigated under a scheme intended to address a historical injustice. Equally, to impose a cut-off date, such as the 1993 decriminalisation date, would almost certainly be challenged as arbitrary and unfair. For those reasons, I consider that the inclusion of these offences would not be legally or operationally viable. However, military convictions for the repealed offences of buggery, attempted buggery, gross indecency and importuning are within the scope of the scheme. I am also conscious that there is an amendment due in respect of section 53, which was also an issue raised by Senator Harmon, but I will respond to that when it arises. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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