On 6 June 2018, the Government, headed up by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar approved the first steps in the process that would lead to publication of the General Scheme of the Sex Offenders (Amendment) Bill. The main intention of this Bill would be “to manage the risk posed by sex offenders and to prevent further harm.”
Incidentally, a ‘general scheme’ is just another way of describing a draft Government Bill that has yet to undergo scrutiny by an Oireachtas Committee. It is only after this happens, that the text of the Bill is then finalised.
Over the course of the next few months this draft was duly published, with the required scrutinising process taking place in the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality on Wednesday, 28 Nov 2018.
This was fairly decent progress considering that it was barely five months on from when the Bill got the initial go-ahead.
A Report was then issued by the Committee in January 2019. Again; not bad. Things were moving swiftly along.
But progress on the Bill since then, at least in terms of publication and debate in the Dáil and Seanad, appears to have ground to a halt.
Yes, the Department of Justice confirmed a fortnight ago that it “intends” to publish the new Sex Offenders Bill before the end of June, or at least “in the coming months.” But why should anyone believe that?
After all, Minister Helen McEntee told the Dáil six months ago, on the 10th of September to be precise, that the Bill was something she wants to see published “as soon as possible.” Yet here we are a full six months on from September 2020, and almost three years on since the green light was given in June 2018, and all we have are yet more ‘commitments’ from the department that the Bill will indeed be published.
Why is this important and why is it something that should rightly annoy and indeed alarm us?
Well, for starters, the new Sex Offenders Bill deals with incredibly important protections for vulnerable adults.
Just how important can be seen in the definition of ‘vulnerable person’ as outlined in the General Scheme of the Sex Offenders Bill.
There, a vulnerable person is any person, other than a child, who has a mental or intellectual disability, or someone who has a mental illness, or is suffering from physical impairment whether as a result of injury, illness or age.
Crucially the General Scheme also says that these disabilities or illnesses “must be of such a degree as to restrict the capacity of the person to guard himself or herself against harm by another person.
The protections in the new Bill also refer to any such person who requires “assistance with the activities of daily living including dressing, eating, walking, washing and bathing.”
It is clear then that the Bill aims to protect some of those who are not only most open to abuse, but also those who have the least capacity to defend themselves against attack.
Even taking Covid-19 into consideration, the complexity of this area of law, and the disruption this has created for government departments, it remains truly reprehensible that a Bill giving effect to such protections has been delayed to this extend.
This will become clear if we contrast the progress of the Sex Offenders Bill with the progress of the Land Development Agency Bill; a Bill that among things sets out to deal with the quagmire that is the national housing policy, and to provide €1.25 billion in funding for a new housing agency.
In October 2019 the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government commenced pre legislative scrutiny of the original version of the Land Development Agency. The Committee then published its report in December 2019. The report made 47 recommendations on how the LDA could be improved.
Then in February 2021 the current Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has published the current version of the legislation. The Bill has now passed Second Stage in the Dáil, leaving only Committee Stage and Report stage to go before it is done.
The contrast could not be more striking, and the message could not be clearer; where there is a political will to address a problem then delays do not factor in, pandemic or no pandemic.
When there is no political will or perhaps even worse, political indifference or skewed political prioritisation, then delays and excuses are trotted out ad nauseam.
As per the norm, the ‘losers’ in this scenario are the weakest and most defenceless among us.