2026-06-10

I move: That Standing Order 194 is modified in accordance with Standing Order 241(2) to provide that it be an instruction to the Committee to which the Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026 may be recommitted in respect of certain amendments that it has the power to make amendments to the Bill which are outside the scope of the existing subject matter of the Bill in order to: (a) make amendments to the International Criminal Court Act 2006 to: (i) give effect to the ratification by the State of the 2010, 2017 and 2019 amendments to Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which extend the specified acts that may constitute war crimes to include intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in a non-international armed conflict and the use of certain weapons, (ii) clarify the legal obligations of Ireland to co-operate with the International Criminal Court with respect to requests concerning all offences under the Court’s jurisdiction, and (iii) enable the Government by order to designate any future amendments or additions to the crimes contained in the Rome Statute as crimes in respect of which Ireland can provide co-operation to the Court, and (b) provide for an application-based scheme to enable the disregard of certain historical convictions and other determinations relating to consensual homosexual activity, and to change the title of the Bill and make other consequential amendments required to take account of the changes above. In my opening remarks on Committee Stage of this Bill I indicated my intention bring these amendments on Report Stage. I will first speak on the proposed amendments to the International Criminal Court Act. These amendments give effect to Ireland's intended ratification of the amendments to Article 8 of the Rome statute, and also ensure that there is an unambiguous basis for Ireland's full co-operation with the ICC in respect of all crimes within the court's jurisdiction, including those that are not offences in Irish law. The amendments have three objectives to ensure that the definition of war crime in the 2006 Act is aligned with Ireland's proposed ratification of the amendments to Article 8. This will have the effect that the offence in Irish law of committing a war crime is expanded to include the use of microbial or other biological agents or toxins, the use of weapons whose primary effect is to injure by fragments, which in the human body escape detection by X-ray, and the use of laser weapons. Additionally, the offence in Irish law of committing a war crime in a non-international armed conflict will be expanded to include the following acts that already come within the definition of a war crime when committed in an international armed conflict: the use of poison and poisoned weapons; the use of asphyxiating poisonous gas; the use of bullets which expand; and intentionally using starvation on civilians as a method of warfare. Expanding the domestic definition of war crimes in this way will enable the State to give full effect to the principle of complementarity. This principle obliges State parties to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed in their territory or by their nationals so that the ICC is used only as a court of last resort. The second objective of these amendments is to take account of the Kampala amendments on the crime of aggression. The third objective is to make it wholly clear and unambiguous that Ireland's co-operation with the ICC is not to be confined to those crimes that are domestic offences pursuant to section 9(1) of the 2006 Act, namely, genocide, a crime against humanity, a war crime or an ancillary offence, but that such co-operation also extends to other offences within the jurisdiction of the ICC, in particular the crime of aggression or offences against administration of justice by the court. Bringing this legislative clarity will ensure there is no impediment to Ireland fulfilling its obligations under the Rome statute to co-operate with the ICC. Finally, it is also proposed to add into the Act an order-making power allowing the Government to designate any future amendments of the crimes contained in the Rome statute as crimes in respect of which Ireland can provide co-operation to the ICC. This would not criminalise the offences in Irish law but would ensure that in a scenario where Ireland may not yet have ratified such an amendment Ireland would still be able to fulfil its obligations to co-operate with the ICC. I will now turn to the proposed legislative scheme for the disregard of certain historical convictions and other determinations, those other determinations being formal Garda cautions and probation orders. As I have previously stated, the Victorian era laws that criminalised consensual sexual activity between men are now widely recognised as a historical injustice driven by ignorance and prejudice. The offences in question were enacted under British rule but very regrettably continued in force for the first 70 years of the Irish State before finally being abolished in 1993. However, consenting adults who were convicted of such offences still carry the entirely undeserved stain of a criminal record. We cannot rewrite history but we can try to undo the pain and hardship those convictions inflicted upon so many men and their families. What our Legislature can do is create a basis by which such a conviction can effectively be nullified so that its recipient is treated in law as if it never happened. Unfortunately, that cannot be achieved by the expedient of a blanket disregard. This is because the offences in question, and hence the recorded convictions, made no distinction between consensual and non-consensual acts, nor between adults and minors. Any given case must, therefore, be assessed on its merits by reference to information provided by the applicant and whatever records are available. In that context, a multi-stakeholder working group reported in 2023 with detailed recommendations on an application-based scheme for the disregard of such convictions. The proposals now before this House have been carefully crafted to align as far as practicable with those recommendations while ensuring the scheme is legally and procedurally robust and that it is efficient and accessible for those who wish to apply. These proposals are being put forward as a new part of the Bill set out across 14 sections, which variously provide for: the offences within the scope; the criteria for a disregard and who may apply, including where the person who received the conviction is now dead; the appointment of an independent person to consider applications and make recommendations to the Minister; the main processes involved in considering and determining applications and issuing successful applicants with certificates of disregard; the legal effects of a disregard, which are comprehensive; the procedures by which a disregard can be refused or, where it is found to be necessary, revoked; and provisions for the independent review of a refusal or revocation where requested by the applicant. I am confident that these proposals provide a workable, equitable and accessible means by which those who were unfairly criminalised can finally seek the removal of this unwarranted blemish on their good name. They and their loved ones have waited a long time for a disregard mechanism and we now have an opportunity to pass it into law in a matter of weeks. I hope I can count on the support of the House for achieving this objective. I recognise the very significant contributions made by Deputy Ó Snodaigh, Deputy Nash and other Deputies who put forward their own legislation previously. Certainly, their advocacy on this issue was a major catalyst and influence on me in trying to ensure we can get this law enacted promptly. While the amendments to the International Criminal Court Act and to provide for a disregard scheme are obviously completely different from each other thematically, what they have in common is they have each been a long time coming and are time-sensitive in their own ways. Both are also appropriate for inclusion in a miscellaneous criminal law Bill currently before the House. I think this legal instrument offers the most expedient route to get them on the Statute Book and into force. This is why I commend the motion to the House.

I want to put on record that the way in which the Minister has handled this entire piece of legislation is in no way satisfactory, not even talking about the guillotine that is in place later on this evening. This is the second motion to instruct the committee we have had to the House where the Minister has added new and completely unrelated matters to a Bill that already covers a range of unrelated matters. Even the Title of the Bill has changed since we discussed it on Second Stage. Effectively what that means, and where the concern is, is there are matters within this Bill that have not been and will not be properly scrutinised by the Dáil, not as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny process and not as part of the justice committee's examination of the Bill. I appeal to the Minister to not have a repeat of this situation, to stop the guillotine and the rushing, and to actually allow proper Dáil scrutiny of legislation. This debate focuses on the inclusion of provisions for the disregard of historical convictions for homosexual activity and the measures to give effect to amendments to the Rome statute, clarifying Ireland's obligation to co-operate with the International Criminal Court. I doubt if there will be an opposition voice against either. Therefore, it is regrettable that it has been brought in a manner which is itself, in my view, controversial. On the issue of disregard of certain historical convictions, I will take this opportunity to commend my party colleague Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh, along with those from across the Opposition benches who have brought forward a Bill to provide for this. It would absolutely have made more sense for the Minister to work with his Opposition colleagues in facilitating that Bill rather than introducing these provisions at this late stage in its Dáil consideration. Aside from that, this issue should have been dealt with decades ago. Although homosexuality between consenting men was eventually decriminalised in 1993, there was little acknowledgement of the profound harm inflicted on generations of men who were convicted in the years prior to this. In the ten years leading up to the decriminalisation, the State had commenced criminal proceedings in 309 cases that resulted in 94 convictions. It is amazing that in our lifetime people were being convicted for their sexuality. It has to be said that for decades, gay men in Ireland lived under an repressive system that criminalised their identities and fostered widespread fear, isolation and persecution. We know that many gay Irish men felt they had no choice but to emigrate, and others felt they had no choice but to keep their sexual orientation a secret, sometimes for their whole life. At moments like this, we have to acknowledge what must have been profound hardship for people who were forced to live a lie their entire life. Criminalisation had a real and devastating consequence for many people. During the AIDS crisis we know there was a stigma attached to homosexuality that meant little public support and often open hostility. In June 2018, the Government issued a formal apology, acknowledging that laws criminalising homosexuality were discriminatory, violated human dignity and caused significant harm to those affected. We have moved on. This is a welcome move but it should have happened long ago. There are different ways it should have been brought forward.

Tá buíochas ag dul don Aire as seo a chur os ár gcomhair inniu. Mar a dúirt mo chomhghleacaí, is trua nach raibh sé os ár gcomhair roimhe seo agus nach raibh an dul chun cinn déanta go dtí seo. I welcome this legislation. This is not the way to do this; it should have been done in a stand-alone Bill. This is substantial legislation, which is welcome, of course. We are not going to get the proper time to tease through all of the implications and the bits that are missing. Hopefully, when the Bill is in the Seanad, the Minister will be able to address some of the shortfalls or omissions that have been pointed out already by the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, which has raised issues. There are simple, technical issues which can be addressed and I hope we will have time, when discussing amendments, to point to some of those. This is about correcting a wrong this State presided over, even if all it did was continue a tradition of the British where the abominable crime deserved penal servitude for life, or death as a felon because of, according to them, "outrages of decency". There are no exact figures for the numbers of people convicted of the offences during the reign of this State. Some figures suggest there were 1,000 or more convictions between the 1920s and 1993. However, there were probably thousands more because sometimes when people were charged, they jumped bail. Others evaded the courts. Some were acquitted. There was stigma attached to them. Some had cases dropped as they had funds or because of the scandal associated with it. Others died of suicide in that period. These are the types of people whose families or loved ones, hopefully - because many of them have passed this stage - will be able to apply for the disregard and the independent person will be able to make quick adjudications and will have the access because I do not think the range of files that will be needed is complete. The Mental Health Commission, for instance, controls all of the papers from Portrane and places like that. Some of the people charged were put into what at the time were called "lunatic asylums". Maybe those places are where the paperwork is to be found. Maybe between this Stage and the Bill being taken in the Seanad, we can look at making sure that those who are required to give records are defined broadly enough so as to ensure that if there is an eventuality, there will be no restriction or any way that a State organ can refuse or block any such access to records.

Is Deputy Gannon sharing time?

I will speak for two minutes. I welcome the disregard amendments. I was delighted, on behalf of the Social Democrats, to sign the cross-party Opposition Bill, with Deputy Ó Snodaigh and others, to advance this issue. It is also an issue I campaigned on before my election to the Dáil. I welcome these amendments and thank the Minister for bringing them forward. It should not have taken the State 33 years to get to this point; it should have happened much sooner. However, we welcome that it has happened. As I said previously, lives have been destroyed by these arrests and convictions. So many men across generations have been impacted. I have no doubt that those who lived through the 1980s and the HIV-AIDS crisis were impacted. More should have been done for those people. I will take a minute to highlight some of the concerns raised by the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, in particular the omissions under military law. The 2022 working group report recommended including relevant offences under military law. That group was set up by the then Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee. Those issues should have been addressed. Similarly, convictions prior to the establishment of the State should have been included. Provisions related to how relatives and friends can apply are too limited. Many of us in the LGBT community call our friends our chosen family. They should be able to apply. I welcome the awareness campaign. That is a crucially important part of the measure. It needs to go right around the world. This issue is of a global nature because people left. There is a real opportunity to remove the legal scars caused by criminalisation, but this is just one step. This is just one thing. For true restorative justice, we need so much more, including transgender healthcare, closing gaps in family law, banning conversion practices and updating equality laws. Those of us campaigning and marching in Dublin Pride in a couple of weeks' time will be sending the message that we need much more to be done on this.

I acknowledge the work done in this area across the Chamber, in particular by my colleague, Deputy Rice. The provisions related to disregarding historical convictions are not only welcome, they are overdue. It is sometimes easy to talk about progress as though it is inevitable and Ireland simply arrived at a more equal place by accident. The reality is those rights were hard fought for. They were won by grit, determination, hurt and harm and by those who chose to believe in better. It is not some distant chapter of history in which homosexuality was criminalised in this country; it is within living memory. There are people alive today who grew up in a State that told them there was something wrong with who they are. These are people who carried not only the stigma of discrimination but, in some cases, the weight of a criminal conviction for consensual relationships. That was wrong, and where the State has done wrong, it has a responsibility to put it right. At a time when we are seeing attacks on LGBTQ+ communities re-emerge across the world, and there are still countries where people face imprisonment simply for being gay, it is important that Ireland continues to move in the opposite direction. It is fitting that we are discussing these measures during Pride month. Pride continues to be a hugely important recognition of those who came before us, a recognition of the harm that was done and that equality is not something that can ever be taken for granted. These provisions matter because they acknowledge a simple truth, namely, people should not spend the rest of their lives carrying the consequences of laws which should have never existed in the first place. For that reason, we will be supporting this important provision. There are aspects of the Bill which are particularly welcome, such as the inclusion of those convicted as juveniles. We know that some young people were caught up in a system that not only criminalised them but, in some cases, led them into institutions where the consequences followed them for years afterwards. The recognition of discriminatory policing is also significant. For many gay men it was not simply the laws themselves which caused harm but the way in which those laws were enforced. Practices of entrapment and targeted policing ruined lives and careers and left many carrying a burden that lasted decades. The recognition that many people were forced to leave this country to escape persecution is also welcome. We should never forget that for many Irish people, emigration was not a choice made in pursuit of opportunity, but an escape from a society that refused to accept them for who they were. While we welcome the scheme overall, there are still issues that deserve further consideration. I am concerned that former members of the Defence Forces who may have been dishonourably discharged or otherwise penalised under parallel military provisions do not appear to be fully covered. The proposed timeframe may also be too restrictive. We know from every other historical injustice this State has attempted to address that trauma does not operate on a Dáil timetable. It can take years for people to feel ready to come forward. That challenge will be even greater for those now living abroad. These are not reasons to oppose the scheme; far from it. They are reasons to continue to improve it. If this legislation proceeds quickly to the Seanad, as appears likely, I hope there will be an opportunity to examine some of those issues further. While I welcome the substance of these provisions, I have to say that the process by which multiple complex policies have been added to this legislation at the last minute is deeply frustrating. Once again, we are looking at a Bill that has become a vehicle for pretty much everything the Minister has chosen to add into it, without scrutiny. It deals with community sanctions, the use of incapacitant spray in prisons, counselling records in rape trials, firearms legislation, Defence Forces powers, European arrest warrants and now it deals with international criminal law and historical convictions. Many of those issues deserve attention and many deserve reform, but every single one of them deserves proper scrutiny. Let us take the issue of counselling notes in sexual offence trials. We are talking about legislation that will affect survivors of rape and sexual violence and that goes to the heart of privacy, dignity, access to counselling, fair trial rights and the administration of justice. This is one of the most sensitive areas of criminal law this House has legislated for. The same can be said of the Defence Forces provisions inserted into this Bill. Hugely significant new statutory powers around State security and aid to the civil power have been added into a miscellaneous provisions Bill. These are powers that warrant detailed examination, detailed questions and detailed debate, yet here they sit alongside a huge range of unrelated matters, all bundled together under one legislative umbrella, and that is a problem. If legislation affects the most vulnerable rights of citizens, if it affects the victims of crime, if it affects civil liberties and if it affects State powers exercised, then it deserves the time and attention required to get it right. Instead we increasingly seem to be treating miscellaneous provisions Bills like legislative suitcases into which anything can be packed so long as there is room. The public cannot properly follow what is happening, civil society groups cannot properly engage and Members are expected to navigate a growing list of complex and unrelated issues within the same Bill. The irony is that some of the most important legislation we pass in this House often receives the least focused attention because it arrives bundled together with so many other measures. While I am delighted to see provisions that relate to historical convictions, and I support ensuring that Irish law keeps pace with developments in international criminal law, it is not unreasonable to ask why all these issues are being dealt with in this way. Important legislation deserves scrutiny, and legislation that will impact lives in the most profound ways should not be rushed, bundled together and pushed through as part of an ever-expanding miscellaneous provisions Bill. This is really starting to look like a tactic. All of us have an important role in this House in scrutinising legislation, making amendments, engaging with groups that have been impacted, hearing from civil society groups, getting into committees and being deliberate and focused in our work. This is an eight-minute speech. Shortly after it, we will have a guillotine that falls after 90 minutes. That is no way of processing legislation. It undermines this House. We have seen it before with the International Protection Bill and we are back here again. It is a poor way of doing legislation and a poor way of treating Parliament.

I have the guts of 20 years' service as a national public representative, but this is the most mental Bill I have ever dealt with in here. It is crazy. There is lots of really good stuff in it but, as regards the structure of a Bill, it is beyond comprehension. It gives "miscellaneous" a new meaning. It is so diverse. It is not good practice; it is the worst kind of practice. I can nearly guarantee the Minister that there will be issues arising out of this legislation because it has not been scrutinised to the level required. I respect that time is of the essence with some of these provisions. I know there is pressure, particularly from the Opposition, in relation to a range of issues, for instance, the disregards being brought in today, which we 100% support, but this is no way to do it. The list of stuff going through this Bill is like an A-to-Z of everything in the Department. It is crazy stuff.

And another Department.

And other Departments, including the Department of Defence. It is a Who's Who. We are doing the ICC Act and the disregard of convictions for homosexuality-related offences today, and there are provisions relating to arrest warrants, prisons, the Minister's capacity to ask for Defence Forces' help, counselling notes, sex for rent, DNA, pepper spray, community service orders, face coverings - there is so much-----

Good. We are getting a lot done.

Yes, but if the Minister were sitting here a few years ago, there is no doubt he would be saying what I am saying. I recall quite clearly his criticism of the previous Minister for justice, whom he now sits beside, in relation to lots of legislation. I have to be honest about this. This is no way to do legislation. For instance, the disregard is such an important topic on its own. The issues in relation to the ICC Act and the Rome Statute are critical. They have potential domino impacts on the triple lock discussion, which I will point out in a second. In addition, from the point of view of the administration of democracy, it is borderline impossible for us to do our jobs here because of the manner in which this is constructed with the cross-references, from a legislative point of view, the drafting, the manner in which we have to approach it and the volume of legislation covered.. Even versioning is a problem in relation to this Bill. In relation to the disregard of convictions for historical offences for people in same-sex relationships, I acknowledge all the work that has been done by many different people down through the years. I have named them in the House previously. I am delighted that the Minister is dealing with this issue and that he has honoured that commitment. I also acknowledge over a decade's work by my colleague Deputy Ged Nash who has been in the Minister's ear about this since he was appointed. It is very rare you get to say it about the person sitting beside you, but, as a colleague whom I have known for many years, Deputy Nash has continuously been on about this for well over a decade. I acknowledge that while he is present. The second issue is relates to the ICC Act and the Rome Statute. I want to reference part of this and, particularly, the issue of the four components in relation to the act of aggression. Where there is an act of aggression by a state, the crime requires that the act "by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations". Not every unlawful use of force will give rise to a manifest charter violation. However, since the ICC has not previously prosecuted in this regard, there is a possibility here, basically, of unintended consequences if the Government gets rid of the triple lock, and that is what I am trying to warn the Minister about.

I very much appreciate the Minister's acknowledgement earlier in his opening contribution that the legislation I produced nine years ago was, in essence, the catalyst for the disregard propositions before us. For the bulk of the history of this State we made criminals of gay men because of who they were and who they loved. Many of those we did not criminalise received public order records, cautions and so on. They were imposed on them by an uncaring State at a very different time in our history. The Bill I presented in 2017 referred to the need for exonerations of men who had criminal records for having sexual relations that were no longer offences under the law. The first part of my Bill, the Minister will recall, called for a formal State apology for the wrongs this State and our society perpetrated by our laws and our actions against the LGBT+ community. I was very proud that, arising from that legislation, the then Government agreed to issue a formal State apology in both Houses of the Oireachtas in the summer of 2018, marking the 25th anniversary of decriminalisation. Tonight is a milestone. It is a landmark. I pay tribute to people like Kieran Rose, Karl Hayden, who is with us here this evening, Eddie McGuinness, Brian Sheehan and other members of the LGBT restorative justice campaign, as well as successive Ministers, including Mr. Charles Flanagan, Deputy McEntee, the current Minister and others, and their officials for the contribution they have made to getting us to this point. My only regret is that the time given to this Bill by the Government is not in any way in accordance with the significance of what we are doing here tonight. That is regrettable. I hope it is something the Minister reflects on. I also hope sufficient time will be provided in the Seanad for amendments on Committee and Report Stages to finesse and nuance the legislation and deal with the gaps. It is of such historic significance that I believe the Minister should give it due recognition and the time it deserves to be debated properly and nuanced and finessed.

There are some positive elements in the Bill that I would very much like to vote for and then there are difficulties with it as well. It is very broad and diverse. It would have been much more positive if we had the opportunity to engage with the issues on an individual level and discuss them in detail. We support the proposal on counselling notes. People who have suffered, in particular from sexual assault, should not have their private counselling notes spilled out in a courtroom. The reforms in that regard are a step in the right direction. However, there are some major concerns about the community service aspect of the Bill. One part of this legislation - it is quite clearly outlined - will potentially allow drug dealers, who in some cases would have been considered for a two-year prison sentence, to basically get community service. We wholeheartedly oppose that. It is very clear that the objective here is primarily more to do with prison capacity than the safety of citizens or anything else. The solution of a community service order is because of the fact that prisons are so overcrowded. In 2024, more than 1,000 prisoners were released on temporary release within 24 hours of being sent to prison. In reply to a parliamentary question, the previous Minister, Deputy McEntee, told Aontú that her officials were selecting candidates for early release due to capacity issues in prisons. It is deeply concerning that this is happening. We need to have a serious conversation about it. The Minister must ensure that prison capacity is significantly expanded so that legislation like this is not necessary. The idea of community service being used as a tool to try to alleviate the capacity difficulties in prisons should concern us all. In 2024, some 700 prisoners went missing from the system. By the end of that year, 131 prisoners unlawfully at large were still unaccounted for. It is very worrying as well that currently 66% of prisoners in Ireland are repeat offenders. The system is crumbling and the fact that in some cases people are being released within a day of incarceration is simply not good enough. Prison capacity has an impact on the alarmingly high reoffending rate. It impacts on programmes that should be taking place and in some cases cannot because of the difficulties in the Prison Service. This is a obviously totally unacceptable.

I am just here in the nick of time. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. As others have said, it is a mishmash, and probably worse for that fact. I want to focus on the section dealing with access to counselling records in sexual offence trials. Last week, Beyond Surviving conducted a focused consultation with survivors - 52 individuals who engaged between 6 and 9 June. These are people who know the harsh reality of the courtroom and understand the consequences of how legislation is drafted in a way that does not respect their needs and wishes. The message from survivors is that the Bill is welcome but it does not give them full protection. Section 13 strengthens the existing framework by requiring that all applications for counselling records must go before a judge. That is welcome. It is a shift away from informal or administrative disclosures. Survivors recognise this as a necessary safeguard. Amendments that introduce a presumption of non-disclosure, create a form of statutory privilege and extend protection to other sensitive records such as medical or child protection files are important steps. The Bill does take cognisance of the fact that counselling notes are very intimate information given in a context that does not have a court in mind. They are reflections of trauma. They are supposed to help people to heal from that trauma rather than prepare them for a court date. I welcome some moves in that respect, as do survivors. The Bill reinforces the justification clause for disclosure and that there would be some form of judicial oversight. I was contacted by survivors and that is why I am emphasising them in particular. I know the Bill covers a whole lot of other areas in terms of historical convictions, the Department of Defence, etc. As others have said, the one point I want to emphasise is that, as far as I can see, the stated intention relating to the presumption of non-disclosure does not appear in the text. If the law does not operate as it is intended, it is not going to work. We must have an explicit presumption, not an implied one. Second, the Bill does not set out what survivors describe as a clear statutory test in terms of relevance, necessity and proportionality in a way that ensures consistency in practice and in case law. Survivors told me about the failure of section 19A and vague drafting about broad intrusive requests. As one put it "the drafting needs to be precise. The failures of section 19A cannot be repeated". The Bill also gives survivors no agency in decisions about their own counselling notes. They have no right to be heard. It is their notes and their life being discussed, yet they have absolutely no input. The waiver should stay in place as it provides autonomy. That loss of control is not addressed. Those are a couple of the points they have raised. I hope they will be taken on board.

Like the other speakers today, I appreciate that it is a huge technical challenge to try to put together the overall meaning behind each section of the Bill because, by its very nature, it is a miscellaneous Bill. The Minister has the benefit of his own advisers in the Department and the expertise of the Department of justice, but no doubt as a former Opposition spokesperson on justice he has sympathy with the rest of us who have to have to try to put it together.

He has no sympathy at all.

The one thing I would say is that we were all here at a previous Stage and, notwithstanding changes that have been made, very significant elements of this Bill were already before us, as complex as they were then and as they are now. I look forward to speaking on some of the 72 amendments that have been tabled. Let us not fool ourselves: the reason there is pressure to get this Bill through is not because the Minister wants to get it through, but because many of the issues it covers are things that are being called for by members of the public and groups that have worked very hard and campaigned on them. I acknowledge the work of Deputy Nash on historical convictions. In this House we often wonder whether we achieve anything at all and maybe on days like this people like him can take note that the work he undertook has reached completion. It is for that very reason I say that sometimes facilitating Bills in this way is really important because it is about getting stuff across the line as well. I take on board comments made by members of the Opposition. I had that issue in the last phase of this Bill. I have done a little bit of homework since, however. There is a lot in this Bill that is to be commended. There is one significant area I have been waiting on for some time and that is the work of the Apartment Owners' Network under the guidance of Pat Montague, which has been seeking the transfer of responsibility for multi-unit developments and the legislation and regulation of that over to the Department of housing. That is incredibly important. We are about to pour millions of euro into an apartment defect scheme. The people with responsibility for spending and delivering that are private entities and private limited companies in the form of owners' management companies. We need to have a way to make sure we regulate those companies, and we cannot do that while the responsibility sits with the Department of justice and has to be transferred over to the Housing Agency. That is one of the many things this Bill does and we are waiting desperately for it to happen. I understand the concerns raised by the Opposition, but I underline the point that the provisions in this Bill are needed and required. That is why I am glad to see them before the House and to see they will be enacted.

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions. I am not a very philosophical person, but one thing I do know is that ministerial careers come and go very quickly and as Deputy McAuliffe said-----

That is for sure.

Tell me about it.

I am well aware of it.

The Minister is in for the long haul.

I hope individuals in this House have the great privilege to be Ministers at some stage in the future-----

Been there, done that.

-----but it comes and goes-----

Bad ones go quicker.

-----and the officials, with the greatest respect, are outstanding people but they will be there for many years. If you want to get something done as a politician-----

Fair point.

-----you have to push it through. I know people are, at one level, criticising me because this Bill contains a whole variety of different issues. It does. I have tried to squash as many issues as possible into this Bill because I want to get these provisions enacted for the benefit of people, such as men in Ireland who were convicted of homosexual offences prior to decriminalisation. In fact, it was Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Nash who raised it with me in my earlier days as a Minister and said they wanted this done. I went back to the Department and I recognised that the quickest way to get it done was to put in into a miscellaneous provisions Bill. With the greatest of respect, had I not done that and had I not put it into the miscellaneous provisions Bill, we would not even be near pre-legislative scrutiny at this stage. We have the report that is sitting there. One of the criticisms-----

The Minister did not need to guillotine it.

One of the criticisms that is regularly made is that I am not getting things done and I am sitting on things, as the Deputies are all perfectly entitled and obliged to say to me if things are not being done. I know they are not asking me to, but I am not going to apologise for trying to get important measures that are of benefit to the public enacted as quickly as possible. I think we all agree that the disregard scheme, as everyone has said, is something that should have been done decades ago. I was not going to allow a situation to develop where I found myself, maybe in the third year of being Minister for justice, wondering whether I would get it over the line. I have driven it and I want to get it done. By the way, I appreciate all the contributions that Members in this House make. It is not the case that they have not scrutinised the matter or given me their views on these issues. In many respects, I have been listening to them for the length of time I have been Minister and I hear them all the time in terms of saying what they want to get done. I will deal with some of the other issues that were raised. The most important thing that was raised in respect of the disregard scheme was the issue about military law. Deputies Rice and Nash raised it. In the course of consultation on the drafting of this, there were significant legal concerns about including any case in which a person had been court-martialled for military misconduct. On careful consideration, I concluded that these offences could not appropriately be included. There were two principal difficulties. First, it would be legally questionable but also impracticable to attempt to determine whether a particular court martial was brought purely because of the homosexual nature of an act rather than because it involved a disciplinary infraction, such as abuse of rank, which would equally have been the case had the act been heterosexual in nature. Second, the relevant misconduct offences under the 1954 Act remain in force and, according to the Department of Defence, continue to be used today. Their inclusion will open the possibility of misconduct convictions right up to the present day and into the future being relitigated under a scheme intended to address an historical injustice. Equally, to impose a cut-off date, such as the 1993 decriminalisation, would almost certainly be challenged as arbitrary and unfair. For those reasons, I consider that the inclusion of these offences would not be legally or operationally viable. However, military convictions for the repealed offences of buggery, attempted buggery, gross indecency and importuning are within the scope of the scheme. The second point of principle, which was raised by Deputy Rice, was about including convictions prior to the establishment of the State. This country, this Government, has no responsibility for acts that were done prior to the declaration of the Irish Republic and our Independence. I cannot go back historically and start operating a disregard scheme because of the criminal justice system that operated in Ireland under the crown. I applied that in respect of the granting of pardons as well. It is a different country. This Republic is not responsible for what happened prior to our Independence. I very much welcome the discussion on this. I know there is a lot in the Bill. Everyone in this House wants to get these provisions enacted, not for the benefit of Deputies or Ministers or anyone else but for the benefit of members of the public, who all need to see this legislation enacted.