I thank the House for the support that all parties have given to this Bill. As the tragic events in Paris last week have starkly illustrated, international co-operation and mutual assistance between police authorities in member states and outside of the EU is becoming increasingly important. Criminals and terrorists do not operate within the boundaries of any international borders and it is absolutely essential that measures to tackle criminality and terrorism also operate across these borders.
This Bill amends the existing Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Act of 2008. That Act already gives effect to 12 international agreements which establish the existing legislative framework relating to the provision of mutual legal assistance. This Bill is necessary in order to give effect to a further six international agreements not yet provided for in the 2008 Act. These are international instruments which have already been approved by both Houses of the Oireachtas.
The Bill provides for a number of enhancements to existing legislation. It provides for Ireland to provide assistance to other member states in the form of special intervention units to assist another state, on request, in dealing with crisis situations that present a serious and direct physical threat such as terrorist incidents. Assistance can take the form of the provision of equipment, expertise or direct assistance in the territory of the requesting member state, if requested. Any specialist units would operate under the responsibility, authority and direction of the requesting member state but would only be able to operate within the limits of their own national powers. As the recent tragic events in Paris have shown, we cannot know whether we may be asked in the future by another state to provide such assistance and it is important to have a legal basis in place to enable us to respond to such requests.
The Bill also provides for the strengthening of the role of Eurojust in exchanging intelligence information about criminality in the EU. Eurojust is an EU agency based in The Hague dealing with judicial co-operation in criminal matters. The Bill will also allow fines imposed by courts in one member state to be collected in another member state where the person concerned resides in or is a citizen of that state. This provision will apply to any fine imposed which is appealable to a criminal court.
I thank Deputies for their support for this Bill.
