With specific regard to victims, the victims' forum was established in the past year. It brings together quite a number of different representative groups and organisations that support victims and survivors and consider what more we can do through policy, legislation or funding supports. That work is ongoing. We have identified a number of key strands to work on initially. Domestic violence is one of those. My plan, Supporting a Victim's Journey, is focused solely on how to support victims through the criminal jus…

More broadly, the Judicial Council is looking at sentencing in general and trying to provide guidelines. It has started this work and is looking at a number of areas, one of which is sexual offences, and is making sure there are guidelines set out for the Judiciary. Our role here in the Oireachtas is, more generally, to set the upper limit. We have some crimes where there is a minimum sentence but that is in very few instances. There is a review under way on that at the moment. Separate to increasing the sentence a…

If we look at the crime trends overall, which are based on pre-Covid numbers, most cases, including theft, burglary and assault, are actually down. Where we have seen crime increase is around sexual offences and domestic violence cases. That said, any type of antisocial behaviour or crime is something we need to be able to respond to. We are trying to look at antisocial behaviour in a number of different ways. I have mentioned the community safety partnership and how important that is in looking at things from a ho…

The Deputy mentioned wardens. This was a successful application through the community safety innovation fund where inner-city gardaí went to Derry and looked at how things operated there. These are wardens based on O'Connell Street and surrounding streets who will identify where issues are emerging. They will engage with groups and work with gardaí to try to prevent incidents or support them in stopping them from escalating. I hope we will be able to replicate the many projects that were successful this year as par…

I agree with Deputy Bruton. The community safety partnerships have somebody working full-time on that. It should be the case that when gardaí come across an issue, they can feed it directly back to the person in the office, who can then deal directly with the local authority which deals directly with the local businesses. It can be used in that way. That is something I will take back and engage with the partnerships on to see if that is happening. If not, it should be happening because it is a very good idea. With …

The JPCs will be developing into community safety partnerships. I appreciate that not everybody will welcome that change. They have served a fantastic purpose to date. They have worked very well but we need to have that multi-agency approach where it is not just the local authorities. Regarding the reserve, unfortunately, the reason it will be the latter half of next year is that we are starting a new Garda recruitment campaign. The concern is that if the two were to happen at the same time, they would be pulling f…

There is work that needs to be done on reporting policy. There is currently a strong focus on the modernisation programme in the Courts Service and one of the biggest challenges in moving to a more digital courts system is the fact the information we have is difficult to collate, is not collected in the same way everywhere and is not necessarily reported on in the same way. Investment and the work of the Courts Service will provide us with a much better system, whereby sentencing, the number and type of cases and a…

It is important that we have information on anything we do. Any policy decisions we make have to be backed up by facts. That applies in any Department or role. The focus of the modernisation programme is to ensure we have a more efficient system that people can use online, rather than the paper-based system on which the justice sector is still reliant, and one that allows us to gather the data and information we need to develop policies. The Judicial Council is working on sentencing guidelines, which will be very h…

I probably should have stressed that, while we are working on the modernisation programme and while we need to have a more effective way to gather data in the courts, information and data are available. For example, the increase in the maximum sentence for assault causing harm from five to ten years has come about through reflecting on other sentencing, working with the DPP and getting information through other sources. There is information available that is helping to feed into policy where changes are needed. On …

We continue to support the Legal Aid Board through allocated funding. The board delivers services through directly employed solicitors in its network of law centres around the country and private solicitors from its private practitioner panels. The board operates a total of 34 full-time law centres along with a number of part-time centres and 20 family mediation centres. Eight of the law centres and family mediation offices are co-located. The board is independent in its functions. I am aware and appreciative of th…

I stress the important work of the Legal Aid Board. A review is under way to identify how the board can support even more people and examine the structures in place, which have never been amended, to increase the number of people who can access the support among those who need it. This new legislation will require additional resources and will require us to ensure legal support is available for people who need it. A sum of €3 million was allocated in this year's budget for that reason. As I mentioned, the Legal Aid…

While I am not aware of the exact details of the case, I know the Minister intends to have the legislation enacted in the coming month. While there might be a lead-in period, the Deputy is right that this legislation will be in place and should be implemented early in the new year, at the latest. Without knowing the details of the case, I am not sure why that would be progressing in that regard. On what people can access when they go to the Legal Aid Board, a number of areas will be considered in the civil legal ai…

We welcome anyone who wants to come to Ireland to study, spend time, live here and pursue a course of study, whether part-time or full-time. When a non-EEA person comes to Ireland to undertake an English language course, or a course at level 6 or above on the national framework of qualifications, NFQ, a stamp 2 student permission will be granted. It was always envisaged that time spent in Ireland as a student would be relatively short and, therefore, not reckonable as residence under the Irish Nationality and Citiz…

We receive between 12,000 and 13,000 citizenship applications per year. We had challenges through the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically where the in-person citizenship ceremonies could not take place. To try to respond to that, we have made a number of different changes to the process itself to try to speed it up and make it easier for people to apply and go through the system. We have also started an online citizenship ceremony, which was a novel way to give people their citizenship. Thankfully, while Covid-19 is st…

This is a priority for me. There are 66 actions contained in the action plan on insurance reform. Thirty-four of those are the responsibility of my Department. The specific change required is probably one of the last key changes required. The Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022 was introduced last night and I will be continuing my speech on it in the next hour or two. I will be introducing an amendment to the civil liability legislation on Committee Stage. There are a number of aspects. We wil…

It affects not only businesses but also community groups, individuals and landowners, as the Deputy has said. The intention is that once the legislation is passed, in the same way as with the judicial council guidelines, we will start to see that impact into the overall payments in the courts. Working with the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, and others in the Department, I hope that in itself will encourage more to come into this space to provide insurance where many are struggling to get it at the moment. In al…

Part 7 amends the Judicial Council Act 2019. The purpose of these amendments is twofold. First, they allow for the temporary replacement of a member of the complaints review committee by providing for an alternate member of the committee to substitute for the absence of a member in additional circumstances. The amendment also provides for the recusal and replacement of a judicial member of the committee in circumstances where the judge in question is the subject of a complaint or otherwise has a conflict of interes…

I have to go, I am afraid.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I welcome the opportunity to introduce the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022. The Bill introduces a number of important reforms in the law across a broad range of areas. These amendments reach across many aspects of people's lives and have the potential to make a real difference. These include court-related amendments that will facilitate centralisation and automation of certain court offices and processes. This is part of a suite of measure…

I move amendment No. 1: In page 6, between lines 8 and 9, to insert the following: “(a) in the definition of “sexual offence”, by the substitution of “section 3;” for “section 3.”,”. This is a technical amendment, with a semicolon replacing a full stop after "section 3" in the definition of "sexual offence", as it is no longer the last definition in this section.