Vol. 545 No. 3
147 Dr. Upton asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform his views on the success or otherwise of the provision in the Criminal Justice Act, 1999, for a ten year mandatory sentence for convictions related to illegal drugs over the value of £10,000; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30338/01]
Part 2 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1999, which came into effect on 26 May 1999 provides in section 4 for the creation of a new offence, related to the possession of drugs with a value of £10,000 or more for the purpose of sale or supply, punishable by up to life imprisonment. Section 5 of the Bill provides that the court shall, in imposing sentence, specify a minimum period of imprisonment to be served of not less than ten years upon conviction for the offence. Section 5 also provides, however, that a court is entitled to depart from the imposition of the minimum sentence where there are exceptional and specific circumstances relating to the offence or the person convicted of the offence which would make it unjust to impose the minimum ten-year sentence.
Factors to which the court may have regard include whether the person pleaded guilty, and, if so, the stage at which the person indicated the intention to plead guilty and the circumstances in which the indication was given and whether the person materially assisted the investigation of the offence. The information available to me at this stage suggests that the provision has resulted in a significant number of drug traffickers pleading guilty to serious drug trafficking offences and in the imposition of substantial sentences for such offences including the imposition of the minimum mandatory sentence of at least ten years in a number of cases. In view of the particularly serious nature of drug trafficking, I have commissioned a study into convictions for the new drug trafficking offence created by section 4.
