Order of Business - 3rd July 2009

Order of Business - 3rd July 2009

Senator David Norris: Earlier this morning a press conference and briefing was held by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties on the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill. I was the only Member of the Oireachtas who attended, which is a pity. I hope Members will take the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the brief that has been made available to them on this important matter. What is happening is extremely dangerous. Senator Alex White is 100% right. It is proposed that people can be convicted on the word of a garda and that they can be detained and their detention continued as a result of an ex parte application. In other words, they are not necessarily informed and are not represented. The Bill proposes that applications for warrants must be heard in secret, regardless of whether the judge or the Garda want this. This type of legislation was thrown out by the House of Lords. One of the noble lords in Westminster said that the threat to democracy comes not from terrorism or gangsterism but from this type of law. Similar provisions were thrown out by a committee of the Houses after the Hederman report because they are a violation of democracy. It is very dangerous to rush such measures through, with a guillotine imposed in the other House and probably no proper discussion of them in this House. I hope the Leader will make provision to deal with this.
Could the Leader approach the appropriate Minister and ask that the voluntary standards industry is supposed to observe in manufacturing venetian blinds be made mandatory? There was a tragic case before the coroner's court recently regarding a young boy who was strangled. His family was very caring and obviously took good care of the child but it was a dreadful occurrence. There has been a number of these cases. This tragedy could have been avoided by a fairly simple modification but it was not made. We cannot leave it to the manufacturers to do this. The jury asked us to attend to these matters.
Judges frequently make recommendations or comment that it is a pity the Oireachtas has not taken a certain action, that it should have done something or that it was negligent in some regard. I believe it would be appropriate to establish a channel of information between the Judiciary and the Oireachtas so judges can send us such messages. The message recommending that we take certain action could be placed on the Order Paper under the heading, "Message from the Judiciary". I accept there is a separation of powers but this proposal would be important and healthy for democracy.