Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: From the Seanad Dail Éireann — 2026-07-15 ============================================================ Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan I thank the Minister for accepting my amendment on character references in trials. Unfortunately, we did not get to the amendment on Committee Stage. Reading back on the report, if I had been eating cornflakes, I would have nearly choked on them, such was my surprise that the Minister had accepted my amendment. I thank him for and commend him on doing so because it is a significant change to the law. It is a simple change, but will be helpful to victims and their families in their pursuit of justice. The use of character references on sentencing in Irish courts has long been controversial and, in some cases, it has compounded the trauma of victims and their families. There has been an ongoing debate about the weight given to character references. Some judges have argued that they do not carry huge weight in determining the outcome of sentencing. That is debatable and certainly not an excuse for allowing what was a flawed system to continue. I have spoken to many people who were devastated as character references came out. Particularly where guilty pleas apply, as someone pleads guilty the whole details of the case might not be divulged to the court and might not be made public. Then a character reference is read out at a sentencing hearing in public talking about how great the individual might have been. There have been serious questions about the accuracy of some of the character references given in public. I have also heard about a case - this was particularly concerning - where people supplied character references but did not realise that they were for a court case, or knew it was for a court case but did not know what crimes applied. Then there were questions around the veracity because they were written documents. An important and welcome change was introduced in respect of sexual offences cases. In such cases, in recent years, references have had to be given on oath or under affidavit and, crucially, can be cross-examined in court. It made sense that this be the case for all indictable offences. It made little sense to have a higher standard in respect of character references in some cases than in others, particularly when they can relate to very serious crimes, including unlawful killings. I was clear. My impetus for tabling this amendment came from dealing with people who had been in a court that was dealing with the unlawful killing of their loved one and, at the end of the case, someone said this individual was a great person. The sense those families had was that the character references played a role in downplaying the seriousness of the offence or the impact on the victim because they focused on the offender's reputation. I met one victim in respect of whom a sentence for coercive control had been secured. The conviction was welcome and difficult, as can be imagined, and then an employer talked about how great the convicted person was at showing up to work on time, always left the place tidy and got on well with all their colleagues. None of that could possibly have had any implication in whether a person was engaged in coercively controlling their partner behind closed doors. I do not know. In fairness, the sentence in that case was reflective of the seriousness of the crime, but at the same time, it was difficult for the victim to hear that being read out. It transpired in that case - it was one of the cases I mentioned, as I contacted the employer involved - that the employer had no idea what the charge being dealt with was and the employer was subsequently embarrassed about it. In that instance, if people know that they are providing a reference they have to give under oath or by affidavit and that they could be cross-examined, we can be damn sure that employers would make sure they knew what they were giving a reference for beforehand. I am pleased that will now change as a result of the Minister accepting this amendment. I support the Seanad amendment. It is set out in a clear way how this will apply. It is a major step forward for fairness and accountability in our courts and for victims who have been traumatised by the existing system, so I thank the Minister. --- 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/2026-07-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-15