Domestic Violence Judgments Register Bill 2026 [Seanad]: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I thank all Deputies for their contributions. I acknowledge the fact that, unusually, every person who has spoken in this debate is in support of the legislation. That is a very positive sign in respect of what we, as a House, are seeking to do in terms of changing the law. On many occasions, understandably and correctly, the legislative process is adversarial and people disagree with legislative proposals being put forward by one side or the other. However, in this instance it is instructive that there is widespread agreement across the House in respect of the legislation being introduced. It is important to note that the only other time that has happened in my experience is in respect of the Guardianship of Infants (Amendment) Bill 2026, which will be finalised tomorrow night and again was inspired by an appalling piece of violence perpetrated against a woman, Valerie French. It indicates that there is broad recognition in this House that we need a co-ordinated response to the growing problem of domestic sexual and gender-based violence. As Deputy Byrne just indicated, it is a problem that predominantly affects women. In Northern Ireland and in the UK, this issue is referred to as violence against women and girls. In Ireland we adopt a broader approach in respect of it, but predominantly we are talking about violence against women and girls. This legislation is an important part of our legislative response to that crisis. It is a small response and nobody is suggesting that it is the full response but it is an important response to it. It is surprising that this legislation has to be introduced at all. The reason I say that is because, as Deputies know, under the Constitution justice is required to be administered in public. That in particular applies in respect of criminal offences. There are family law cases, which Deputy Gogarty referred to, that are heard in camera . There are some criminal prosecutions where, for the purposes of protecting the identity of the complainant, individuals' identities are not revealed. To a large extent, cases of prosecutions for assault causing harm under section 3, assault causing serious harm under section 4, coercive control and manslaughter are all cases that are heard in public. Rape is an exception because of protecting the anonymity of the complainant. This legislation is necessary because all of those are cases that are heard on indictment and will be determined by a jury in the Circuit Criminal Court or the Central Criminal Court. All around Ireland today, there are cases in the Circuit Criminal Court and the Central Criminal Court where the outcome of the jury's deliberations gives rise to a sentence being imposed by the court. However, unlike in civil proceedings, there is not a written judgment of 20 or 30 pages recording the facts of the case. The courts website shows judgments from the High Court or the Circuit Court in the civil sphere and reserved reported judgments of the judges of the High Court predominantly. The only time we get a written judgment in respect of a criminal trial is if it goes on appeal to the Court of Appeal and then we get the details of what happened in the court below, the conviction, the nature of the defence and the detail about the individual concerned. One of the consequences of the fact that verdicts are delivered by juries promptly and there is no written record of them outside of that is that sometimes people do not get to hear about them. We are dependent upon journalists being in court in order to find out about criminal convictions and the decisions of verdicts. To a large extent, journalists do that very professionally. Virtually all the cases that happen in the Central Criminal Court are reported upon even though today we have about ten Central Criminal Courts in operation at any one time. Unquestionably, individuals are being convicted of serious offences in the Circuit Criminal Court and people are not hearing about them because there is no journalist in court to report them. That is no criticism of journalists; it is just a fact of the matter. Therefore, someone looking for a record of whether somebody was convicted of, for example, assault causing serious harm under section 4 in a Circuit Court down the country will not be able to find that out. My view is that is a failing and a fault in the system. We should be able to find out information in respect of criminal convictions. That is a battle for another day. As everyone has noted, inspired by Jason Poole in memory of his sister, Jennifer, there had to be some process of making information available arising from verdicts that are given and judgments delivered in respect of people convicted of serious offences against an intimate partner or former partner. That is the purpose of this legislation. At the outset it limits it to indictable convictions and people who have been convicted of serious offences in the Circuit Criminal Court or the Central Criminal Court. A schedule of the offences is set out, including obviously murder, manslaughter and rape. When we get down into the other offences, these are the potential offences that may not be reported upon, such as assault causing harm, assault causing serious harm, non-fatal strangulation, threats to kill, harassment, endangerment, false imprisonment and indeed coercive control under the Domestic Violence Act. The benefit of this legislation is that the courts will now know, after a person has been convicted on indictment of any of those offences and if it involves an intimate partner or former intimate partner, that there is a statutory mechanism available for the court to put in print details of that conviction. Since this is something that is novel, I am probably adopting a conservative approach in the initial drafting of it. We will have a discussion tomorrow night about the amendments that will come forward. We had a very good discussion and debate on it in Seanad Éireann. In my view, when starting with something like this, we are better off starting cautiously rather than trying to get everything into the statutory scheme. Once we have this new statutory scheme up and running, I hope to see it develop over time. I have picked domestic sexual and gender-based violence as the type of offences which need to be covered by this new statutory scheme because of the experience of Jennifer Poole and the appalling history of what happened to her, which my colleague Deputy McAuliffe recounted earlier. People would like to be aware if somebody has been convicted of a serious offence against a previous partner or former partner. As has been stated by many Deputies here, it will not necessarily be the case and it cannot be assumed that just because someone's new partner is not on this new register once it comes out that therefore they are safe. Of course they are not. Obviously, people have to engage in their own assessments of a person when entering into a relationship. Deputy Devine started off the contributions by referring to the fact that everyone hopes to meet love. It is important to recognise that, fortunately, the vast majority of engagements that people have are not violent relationships. They might not all work out, but they are not relationships which are violent. However, regrettably in this House we have to deal with those issues which cause problems and which damage individuals. That is why it is necessary to recognise that some relationships do not end up in that specific way which I discussed a few moments ago but involve a male partner with a history of violence. I believe this House should certainly try to put in place a regime and a statutory mechanism whereby somebody entering into a relationship should be able to find out if that person was convicted of a serious offence in the past. I know people have mentioned here that they would like to see further offences included, such as summary convictions in the District Court. I will not go down that route at this stage. Maybe a future Minister or future Oireachtas may want to do it. Certainly, the State should facilitate the public being aware of persons who are convicted of serious offences and of causing serious harm to a former partner. It goes back to the point I made at the beginning. The Constitution states that justice is to be administered in public. If we are in the court today and we hear about it, we are entitled to talk about it and so people are entitled to be aware. --- 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/dail/2026-07-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-14