Domestic Violence Judgments Register Bill 2026 [Seanad]: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-15
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I will make a couple of ripostes. In terms of the bar being set high and the logic behind using that phrase, I am sure the Minister will accept, and he probably knows this better than anybody in the Chamber, that it is an indisputable fact that the vast majority of cases of abuse are never reported. That has been well-documented. The vast majority of reported abuses never result in court cases at all. The majority that result in court cases do not subsequently result in a conviction for one of the 17 offences the Minister has outlined. When I say that the bar is high, it is not to suggest that it is incredibly narrow but it is a high bar. I hope the Minister will take that on board.
In respect of the point around rehabilitation, the aforementioned young fella or young woman who had a public order offence and happened to end up in a court when their local journalist was in attendance are statistically much more likely to have rehabilitated themselves than someone who has committed a sexual offence but they are in the local paper. It is published. They can do nothing about it. That is just the outworkings of justice happening publicly. I understand the Minister's rationale for saying that there has to be a point of appeal or a legal mechanism by which somebody can ask for their name to be withdrawn. I have very little sympathy for them, to be quite frank, and I hope that any court in which such an application comes before it will have very little sympathy but the point is around when that avenue should become available. Three years after such a conviction is far too short. From speaking to campaigners on this issue, this is a position that is held. That is why I would make the argument strongly that five years - arguably too short in itself - is much more reasonable.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-15