I welcome the students from St. Fintan's school as well. I hope they have an enjoyable day. There are several matters I want to deal with regarding the Order of Business. I wish to remind the Leader, before I start, that I have in recent times obtained generalised agreement to the proposition that the Garda Reserve would be the subject of a ministerial discussion and debate in this House and that the issue of prison overcrowding would also be discussed as matter of urgency. I reiterate those requests that those mat…

We do not often see the Minister, Deputy Harris, here.

I welcome the Minister of State to the House, and I echo the sentiments expressed by Senator Ward. I have a number of things to say to the Minister of State. There is a scandal going on now in the central office of the High Court. One cannot go in there and get a summons issued unless one makes an appointment in advance. The system used to be that one went to a counter, and presented the summons one wanted to be issued. It was issued and that was it. Now, one has to go through an elaborate thing to make an appointm…

I am talking about the legal aid system and I am very much sticking to this Bill. Senator Ward has told the House this. Have his words been ignored? Does this House realise that our legal aid system is creaking so much that somebody sent forward for jury trial today is given a date in 2025? That is a scandal. It is a complete scandal. Think of a rape victim, or a little old lady whose house was burgled and she was badly beaten up. Think of people in those circumstances, not to mention a person accused of a case who…

The Senator's father paid a very heavy price for it. He was deselected.

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. He is always welcome here. He came to the Chamber on a previous occasion to explain the Government's activity on this matter. We were entertained by promises and commitments at that time from both himself and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. We were told that, in very short order, a consultation group would be set up among the Government parties and the Minister would come back to the House by the autumn of that year to present proposals. That was two year…

I know that.

Hear, hear.

I welcome the Minister of State. It is a long time since the people of Ireland voted on this issue in 1979, in the dim and distant past. That is the first point. The second is that it has been five weeks since the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the matter. It is also the case that the Supreme Court has said it will extend the stay on its decision until the end of July in order that the Government can, in the meantime, come in to tell the Supreme Court how much longer it will need to deal with this proble…

I note the Minister of State's response. I see the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, are working on proposals to bring to Cabinet. First, those proposals should be the subject of major consultation with the relevant committees of the Oireachtas, the relevant university institutions, the Electoral Commission and the wider public. Second, I emphasise that it is hugely important that we do not just simply concentrate on the university seats, which do need reform, and I have legisl…

I refer to remarks that were made yesterday at the annual meeting of prison officers. The figures for the prison system at this time are shocking. There are 157 people sleeping on mattresses on floors. There are cells with four bunks. The capacity of the women's prison is approximately one third of what is necessary. It is suggested in The Irish Times today that the Minister, Deputy Harris, is thinking of knocking down the separation unit in Mountjoy and rebuilding it to provide 100 extra spaces. Years ago, as Mini…

When this matter was originally being considered for approval in this House, it was to be discussed without debate. I apologise because I was partly responsible for asking for the matter to be debated. The reason was that I believe there are wider issues at stake. I agree completely with Senator Ahearn in that the rates in question are not surprising and probably below the market level in many instances. Therefore, the economic effect of this order is probably likely to be minimal. The point I want to raise is a sl…

First of all, I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This Bill is a catch-all measure. I have no objection to that. There are little things that have to be done right across the Department of Justice's portfolio of responsibilities and instead of having a separate Bill for each of them, a catch-all Bill of this kind is a useful vehicle to get them moving. On the Order of Business today, I asked for a debate on the future of prison policy and the Acting Leader said that he would contact the Department. When I…

We have, as Senator Wilson said, a growing population. It has increased to 5.1 million from 3.9 million, as it was then. We have very serious crimes being committed. I am the first to say of any District Court judge who thinks it is remotely just to say to some young fellow who resists arrest or spits at a garda that he should go to prison that it is a stupid decision and that he or she is ruining that kid's life. I wanted every District Court judge who committed anybody to a short term of imprisonment to write out…

-----to ensure that it was not done. There is a right of appeal to the Circuit Court but there are people who fall through those cracks and end up in Mountjoy Prison. Their lives are ruined forever. The time has come for the Department of Justice to face up to the issue. It has between 20 and 30 acres of city-centre prime development land at Mountjoy. To start knocking bits of Mountjoy Prison down and building them up again is simply insane. It is a waste of taxpayers' money. The time has come for the Department to…

I welcome the Minister of State. Obviously this legislation is primarily to confirm, in statutory form, what has been agreed by Dáil Éireann in financial resolutions and, therefore, there is very little we can do or say about it, except to say that these measures are generally intended to mitigate and alleviate some of the particular hardships being endured by business, consumers and farmers, arising out of the financial disturbances we are currently experiencing. I will say a couple of things about the overall fin…

Through the Chair, I ask the Deputy Leader to consider setting aside some time in the House to discuss Covid, the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, the Government's response and whether there are already lessons to be learned. I understand that an inquiry into all of these matters is in progress. Normally, I would say that we should await the outcome of the inquiry but, having seen what I saw yesterday on the screen, in the responses by the Secretary General, Mr. Robert Watt, to questions put to him, I …

I raise the possibility of having a debate in this House with the Minister for Justice on the subject of the Garda Reserve. There is, on paper, a strategy for the revitalisation of the reserve over five years from 2021 to 2025. We are already in 2023 and no recruitment has taken place in recent years to the reserve. The result is that the membership of the reserve has fallen from around 1,200 to approximately 300. Many members of the reserve feel they have not been utilised and that there has been a degree of hosti…

I want to express my complete agreement with the sentiments expressed by Senator Mullen on all fronts. It seems to me that we are here dealing with a problem which, based on some of the case law that has been mentioned, one might think the problem does not exist to the extent that it does. Senator Mullen has put his finger on one very important point and that is the iceberg principle, namely, that the great majority of cases which come to report and are reported are where schools are in fact found not guilty of neg…

That is what Committee Stage is all about.