Criminal Procedure Bill 2021: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2021-04-26
============================================================

Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

A point has occurred to me. Section 6(6) states: "Where an accused has not been arraigned prior to a preliminary trial hearing in the proceedings concerned, the trial court may, where it considers it appropriate, direct that he or she shall be arraigned at the commencement of such a hearing."
It occurred to me that it would be better to substitute the words "the accused" for "he or she", not because I am worried about gender fluidity but I am worried about bodies corporate which may or may not be prosecuted also. It would be better to use "the accused".

---

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/2021-04-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:12+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-04-26