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A meeting of South Dublin County Council has discussed plans to send a letter to the Minister for Justice amid concern about the number of suspended sentences being received in assault cases.
Dublin People reported the comments which were made at this month’s meeting of SDCC in which Independent councillor Paul Gogartysaid, “We’ve had quite a number of attacks on members of the public, including high-profile ones, in recent months”.
Gogarty said,“There is general dissatisfaction and public outrage where people can get by with fairly lenient sentences. The only way that can be ultimately changed is if the Oireachtas change how the laws are enacted and the independent judiciary then makes the decisions on the basis of that.”
Noting that he was “quite aware” that it’s not the position of local councils to “interfere in the judiciary”, he said that the decision was made among councillors to “express concern about the sentencing process”.
He said that there was a lack of confidence among the public mood regarding the issue.
Speaking of the plans to send the letter he said the motion “is more about expressing the sentiment and leaving it up to those whose remit it is to examine it.”
“Too often, men in particular have gotten away with horrific attacks on women and it needs to be set out through the legislative process that it cannot cannot be tolerated.”
“It’s not trying to change any particular element of the law because we don’t have that remit, it’s about sending out that sentiment and message,” he said.
South Dublin County Council will now write to the Minister for Justice, the Law Reform Commission, and the Judicial Council in respect of their concerns.
Gript recently reported on a number of violent crimes committed by individuals who were at large after having received suspended sentences.
Ben Scallan detailed the case of a 93-year-old woman who sustained “life changing injuries” in the course of a burglary in 2022.
One of the two men involved in the attack, 32-year-old Damien Long, was out on a suspended sentence for another offence.
In February 2022, 39-year-old Brian McCann launched an “unexpected and unprovoked” assault on another man in Dublin leaving him with a bleeding nose and a black eye. McCann had 42 previous convictions for offences including assault and threats to kill or cause serious harm.
He was also “under the shadow of a suspended sentence” at the time of the attack according to Judge John Hughes who jailed him for three months.
Speaking in the aftermath of the suspended sentence given to ex-Irish soldier Cathal Crotty after he viciously assaulted Natasha O’Brien last year, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said she had “consistently” seen sentencing for assaults that “have not seemed strong enough” over the last number of years.
In reference to the Crotty case McEntee said, “my job is to make sure that there was a maximum sentence there and over the last number of years what I have seen consistently, where you have assaults that have taken place, sentences have not seemed strong enough.”
“And so that’s why I’ve doubled sentences from five years to 10 years, giving greater discretion to the judges who are hearing the cases.” she said.
As Gript recently reported, an annual impact report from Women’s Aid shows that the support organisation received a record number of 40,048 disclosures of domestic abuse against women and children in 2023 – the highest number in their history.
More than 40,000 disclosures were made during 28,638 contacts with its national and regional support services last year.
Women’s Aid said that there was an 18% increase in disclosures of domestic abuse compared to previous year and the highest ever received by the organisation in its 50-year history.
Abuse of women included emotional abuse, physical violence, sexual abuse, and economic control, many combining to constitute coercive control, with an alarming increase in both physical violence (up 74%) and economic abuse (up 87%) compared to the previous year, the support organisation said.
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