Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 6 Apr 1976

Vol. 289 No. 7

Criminal Justice (Verdicts) Bill, 1976: Second Stage.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Cooney)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The purpose of this Bill is purely technical. It involves no question of principle. Briefly, what it does is to secure that, where a criminal court is sitting without a jury, the court shall have the same power to make any determination as if the court were sitting with a jury.

The kind of determination that is most relevant for the purpose of the Bill is a determination that the accused is guilty of an offence different from but cognate to and in general lesser than the offence specifically charged. Determinations may also be necessary sometimes as to the sanity or insanity of the accused or, very occasionally, as to whether he has already been tried for the offence charged. The Bill will apply to determinations of these issues also, but as the first kind of determination I have mentioned— that is to say, a determination that the accused is guilty of a different offence—is the most important, I shall deal with this matter first.

The powers under which a person charged with offence A may be convicted instead of offence B are commonly referred to as the powers to give "alternative verdicts", and they are a well-known feature of criminal procedure in jury trials. Some of the powers are common law ones, others are statutory.

The common law rule is that a person charged on indictment with a felony may be convicted instead of a lesser felony whose ingredients are included in the felony charged and, similarly, that a person charged with a misdemeanour may be convicted of a lesser misdemeanour included in the misdemeanour charged. To take two examples only from among felonies, a person charged with murder may be convicted instead of manslaughter and a person charged with robbery may be convicted instead of larceny. This is because an allegation in an indictment that the accused committed murder necessarily implies an allegation of manslaughter and an allegation that he committed robbery necessarily implies an allegation of larceny. The lesser offence is included in the greater, and the giving of the alternative verdict that the accused is guilty of the lesser offence means that the jury were not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the conduct of the accused amounted to the offence specifically charged but were satisfied that it amounted to the lesser offence.

In addition to the common law rule there are several statutory provisions by which a person charged with offence A may be convicted instead with offence B. In some cases the reason for the statutory power is that, although the ingredients of the lesser offence are included in the offence charged, the offence charged is a felony and the lesser offence is a misdemeanour and, as I have indicated, the common law power applies only where both the offences in question are felonies or both are misdemeanours. The common law rule does not allow the jury to cross the line, so to speak, between felonies and misdemeanours.

Examples of statutory powers given for this reason are the power under section 5 of the Prevention of Offences Act, 1851, by which a person charged with the felony of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm may be convicted of the misdemeanour of unlawful wounding and the general power under section 9 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1851 by which a person charged with committing an offence may be convicted of attempting to commit that offence. The reason for the latter provision is that with few exceptions an attempt to commit an offence is a misdemeanour even if the offence attempted is a felony. Besides this class of enactments there are several enactments by which a person charged with offence A may be convicted instead of offence B when, although the ingredients of offence B are not necessarily included in offence A, the two offences are by their definitions so closely related that it may be difficult for the prosecution to foresee, in advance of the evidence, which is the appropriate offence to charge. Examples are the provision in subsection (1) of section 44 of the Larceny Act, 1916, by which a person charged with robbery may be convicted instead of assault with intent to rob and the provisions in subsection (2) of the same section by which a person charged with embezzling property may be convicted instead of stealing it and a person charged with stealing property may be convicted of embezzling or fraudulently converting it.

With that summary of the technical rules as to alternative verdicts, I come to the particular difficulty that is the occasion for introducing this Bill. The difficulty is that most of the statutory provisions allowing alternative verdicts are in terms of what "the jury" may do. This applies to all the statutory provisions that I have just instanced. Leaving on one side for the present summary trials, this method of drafting was appropriate in the case of trials on indictment, which at the time when the enactments were passed were always tried with a jury and which are still so tried in the ordinary course. But now, unfortunately, trials in some cases have to take place before the Special Criminal Court, which sits without a jury. In a case decided by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 12th November last—the case of The People (Director of Public Prosecutions) v. Rice—a man was tried before the Special Criminal Court for robbery and was convicted by the court of assault with intent to rob. This was in reliance on the provision in section 44 (1) of the Larceny Act, 1916, to which I have referred; but the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the conviction on the ground that the power under that provision to convict of assault with intent to rob was expressed to be exercisable by “the jury” and did not apply to the Special Criminal Court sitting without a jury.

This situation is clearly unsatisfactory, because the Special Criminal Court should obviously be able to give whatever alternative verdict a jury can give and before the decision I have mentioned this was thought to be the law. The present Bill seeks to remedy the situation by providing—to state the matter shortly—that a criminal court sitting without a jury may make any determination that could be made if it were a court sitting with a jury. In particular, this will enable the court to convict of an alternative offence in any case where a jury may do so.

The main provision is in section 1 (1), which assimilates the powers of a court sitting without a jury to those of a court sitting with a jury in the respect I have mentioned. The subsection will apply not only to the case of the Special Criminal Court but also to the District Court. In general the powers available to juries to bring in alternative verdicts are not exercisable by the District Court. Therefore if the District Court considers that the evidence shows that the accused should be convicted of a lesser offence than the offence charged, a fresh information must be issued charging the lesser offence. There is an exception in the case of dangerous and careless driving. By section 53 (4) of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, a person charged with dangerous driving may be convicted instead of careless driving, and this applies both to jury trials and trials in the District Court.

It seems to the Government that, now that provision is to be made ensuring that the Special Criminal Court should have the same powers as juries to give alternative verdicts, it would be desirable in the interests of simplicity that the powers should extend to the District Court. Therefore subsection (1) gives the powers to any court sitting without a jury. Paragraph (b) of the subsection is worded as it is to take account of the fact that a purely summary offence cannot be tried with a jury: the paragraph secures that the District Court shall have the necessary powers in respect of a trial for a purely summary offence as if it were an offence triable on indictment—that is to say, triable with a jury.

Subsection (2) is very technical. It ensures that, in any case where a person is charged with offence A and can be convicted instead of offence B, he can plead guilty to offence B. The result, if the prosecution are willing to accept the plea of guilty and the court approves, is that the accused is convicted only of offence B and dealt with accordingly. This is the procedure at present under section 39 (1) of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914 in respect of trials on indictment, and subsection (2) will ensure that the procedure applies to all courts. The subsection will cover trials on indictment before the ordinary criminal courts and will therefore supersede the provision in the 1914 Act, which subsection (4) repeals.

So far I have referred mainly to the powers of convicting of alternative offences. But I mentioned briefly two other classes of issues which juries may have to determine in trials on indictment in the ordinary courts. These are, first, issues in relation to the sanity or insanity of the accused and, second, the issue whether a person is exempt from trial on the ground that he has already been convicted or acquitted by a competent court of the offence charged. The second class of issues, which are raised by what are technically called pleas in bar—of "autrefois convict” or “autrefois acquit” as the case may be—rarely arises and need not detain us. The Bill will enable the court to decide the issue as a jury can.

The issues as to insanity are more important. At present an issue as to the sanity of the accused may arise at three stages. First, before the trial begins there may be a question whether the accused is so insane that he cannot be tried at all—that is to say, whether he is what is called "unfit to plead". Second, a similar question may arise during the trial. Third, the accused's defence may be that, although he may have committed the act in question, he was insane so as not to be responsible in law for his action—that is to say, that the verdict should be "guilty but insane". In all these cases the issue of insanity is determined by a jury— in the first two cases under section 17 of the Lunacy (Ireland) Act, 1821 and in the third under section 2 of the Trial of Lunatics Act, 1883. I should mention that there is a slip in the Bill in that the short title of the 1821 Act is the Lunacy—not Lunatics —(Ireland) Act 1821. This will be put right in the next print.

In a case where the issue of fitness to plead arises before the trial a jury is specially formed to determine the issue. Under the Acts, if the jury finds the accused insane, the court orders him to be detained until he is found fit to plead, or to be detained in a place suitable for a person who has been found guilty but insane, as the case may be. The place in which he is detained is determined by order of the Minister for Justice. By subsection (1) of section 1 of the Bill the functions of a jury in deciding the issue of sanity will be exercisable by the Special Criminal Court in the case of a trial before that court. But subsection (3) ensures that the powers under the Acts mentioned shall not be exercisable by the District Court. In the District Court the issue of the sanity of the accused does not arise in practice—even in the higher courts it rarely arises except in cases of murder—and it would not, in the Government's opinion, be appropriate to include in the Bill a provision that would, in theory, give the District Court so great a power as that exercisable by the higher courts under the two Acts mentioned, involving as it does the possibility that the accused will be detained indefinitely in the State mental hospital. For this reason the Bill extends the powers of courts sitting with juries in these respects to the Special Criminal Court only.

I commend this Bill to Deputies.

Mr. G. Collins

This Bill is distasteful because it has been dressed up in the explanatory memorandum and presented to this House and to the public as a small tidying up operation and a regularisation and improvement on the present criminal law and procedure, whereas the reality is that it is nothing of the kind.

The real motive behind this Bill, as is partially alluded to in the explanatory memorandum, is to get over by statute the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal in the case of The People versus Rice. Certainly there has been no other judicial verdict or decision or any call from those who practise the criminal law that the procedures in the District Court and the powers in relation to a finding of sanity need change or alteration. Accordingly it can be taken that the mainspring of reasoning behind this Bill is that the Rice decision in some way affected the effectiveness of the Special Criminal Court. The Rice decision did nothing of the sort, and I will deal with that decision in a few minutes.

When we were discussing the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill some weeks ago one of the grounds of objection to that Bill was that, by virtue of the procedures contained in it, the Minister was tending to make the Special Criminal Court part of the permanent, established criminal jurisdiction of this country. This Bill attempts to do the same, and that is one reason why I am not at all keen on it.

The Special Criminal Court is, as its name implies, a special court. The Constitution empowers the establishment and the functioning of such special courts. Over the years the Special Criminal Court has been brought into existence on three occasions. On each occasion it lasted for a comparatively short period of time, and then the processes of the ordinary courts became operative again. During all the times that the Special Criminal Court has been in operation it has operated under the jurisdiction given to it by the 1939 Offences Against the State Act and, in particular, section 43 of that Act, which gives jurisdiction to the Special Criminal Court.

The jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court is limited to certain scheduled offences and also to other offences which the Attorney General may certify to be appropriate to be tried by the Special Criminal Court. Indeed, it is to be noted that when the Prosecution of Offences Act was being passed providing for the setting up of the Director of Public Prosecutions, it was expressly provided that the Attorney General might retain the power of certification.

The jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court is to try and to convict or acquit any person lawfully brought before that court. Section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act of 1939, in sections 45 to 48, inclusive, lays down different procedures whereby a person may be brought before the Special Criminal Court. In all cases it is clear that the jurisdiction of the special court to try and to convict or acquit any person is limited in those sections to trying and convicting or acquitting those persons who are before the court on specified charges or, as in the phrase used in those sections, "on such charge".

This was the real matter at issue in the Court of Criminal Appeal in The People versus Rice case, and although it was not necessary for a court to go that far in its decision, it is quite clear that the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court is limited to trying those offences with which the accused before it has been expressly charged.

I very much doubt whether the Minister's expressed intentions in this explanatory memorandum can be fulfilled. I do not think his efforts to amend the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, which he is trying to do here this afternoon without even mentioning that Act by name, will be sufficient to confer fresh jurisdiction on a court which is special by name and special by the constitutional authority which enabled it to be set up.

I find it extremely difficult to understand why the Minister in looking for these changes did not come into this House and ask that the Offences Against the State Act be amended. Surely this would be the proper way of achieving what he hopes to achieve, but under another name. Is it perhaps that the Minister and the Government are not sure that if they came before this House with an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, they would have the full support of all the members of the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party? When pondering these questions one must cast one's mind back to 1972 when the present Minister for Justice, then on this side of the House and on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, castigated his predecessor, Deputy O'Malley, then Minister for Justice, for trying to bring through this House an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act. It is very likely that the present Minister for Justice will do everything to avoid bringing about changes in legislation, particularly if it is labelled an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act. Perhaps the Minister knows that he could not count on the voting support of all the members of both parties that make up the Government.

In my view the Minister came into this House trying to make changes in legislation but he did not go about it in a straightforward way. For political reasons we are dealing with a Bill which will bring about change and which, if passed, will be known as the Criminal Justice (Verdicts) Bill, 1976. The Minister and the Government would be more honest with this House, with themselves and with the people, if they said they wanted to amend the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, but were not sure that they could vote it through the House because they were not satisfied they could depend on the support of the members of the two parties which form the Government.

In the Rice case, which has already been mentioned, the accused was charged with aggravated robbery, that is, robbery while armed with an offensive weapon. At the end of the prosecution case the prosecution had either failed or neglected to prove that any robbery had taken place. In that case it would have been equally open to the Director of Public Prosecutions to have had Mr. Rice charged not merely with aggravated robbery but also with assault with intent to rob and any other charge that might have seemed appropriate to him. Had he done so that would have been sufficient to give jurisdiction to the court to try to convict or acquit Mr. Rice of all the charges with which he had been charged.

I mentioned that the Special Criminal Court had been in operation on three occasions since the 1939 Act came into being. That is relevant in this context. During all the years the Special Criminal Court was in operation it was quite clear that the jurisdiction of that court was limited as I described it. It was the practice that any offence of which, on the particular set of facts, an accused might be found guilty, was included in the list of charges with which an accused person was charged before the Special Criminal Court. On all the occasions when we were in office, and when the prosecutions to the Special Criminal Court were made under the direction of the Attorney General of the day, we were aware of the jurisdiction of the court to which we were certifying and sending forward persons to be tried.

This Bill does two things in relation to the Special Criminal Court. First, in relation to jurisdiction, it purports to extend and confer on the Special Criminal Court a jurisdiction not given to it by the Act which set up the court, namely, the Offences Against the State Act, without mentioning the jurisdiction section of the Special Criminal Court, section 43 of the 1939 Act, and without mentioning in this Bill the existence of the Special Criminal Court itself or the Offences Against the State Act. It is very doubtful if the Minister can so confer jurisdiction on the Special Criminal Court in this way.

Secondly, it places a premium on the incompetence or otherwise of those charged with prosecuting criminal offences. It may require a little more time and effort to decide what are the appropriate charges for a Special Criminal Court to determine. I do not think the way to get over the apparent failure of prosecutors to prosecute properly in the Special Criminal Court is to pretend that the Special Criminal Court is not in fact special but is an ordinary court sitting with a jury. The striking impression left by this Bill, when it is read in conjunction with the explanatory memorandum, is that it seems a little less than honest. If the Minister were honest, open and candid he would have brought in a Bill to amend the Offences Against the State Act where he thought it necessary to change the operations of the Special Criminal Court. As I said, perhaps he could not depend on his own backbenchers if the words "Offences Against the State Act" were mentioned.

In relation to the District Court the position is also objectionable. When a person is before any criminal court he is entitled to know the exact offence with which he is charged. One of the reasons for this is that he is entitled to defend himself. It is specious for a Bill to be brought in giving a District Court the same powers a jury have in a trial on indictment. The District Court is a summary court and is entitled to try only summary offences, with limited exceptions. Any specific legislation where it may seem desirable to give the District Court power to find an alternative verdict, as in the case of reducing a charge from dangerous to careless driving, is the place to give that jurisdiction and not by lumping it all together in this Bill.

The House would be sympathetic to the Minister in the example I have given. The difference between dangerous and careless driving is a factual matter depending on the evidence. This is a clear example of where it is sensible to give this power to a justice. This Bill is going too far in giving overall powers to the District Courts, which is set up under the Constitution to deal with summary offences. The Minister uses the Rice decision as the basis for the need for the Bill, but he gives no such explanation for extending this power to the District Court. From my understanding of what the position is in the District Court I believe this power is unnecessary and there is no recent case or series of cases which have shown any need for this power to be given to the District Court.

In relation to the power given to the Special Criminal Court to find a person unfit to plead, the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court is limited to trying, convicting or acquitting persons under the provisions of section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act. I do not believe the Minister can purport to amend that jurisdiction in any way by this Bill. It is frightening that the Minister purports to give such powers to the Special Criminal Court when none of its members may be judges or even lawyers and where the court can consist in toto of military officers.

I appreciate this has not been the position in the last three-and-a-half years but it is always open to be so. The power of finding a person unfit to plead is a jurisdiction which should be clearly left to the ordinary courts. The Minister is presumably aware of the current order made by a judge where a person in the Central Criminal Court found unfit to plead is kept in detention until the judge is satisfied that at some future date he has become fit again. Does this presuppose an indefinite extension of the life of the Special Criminal Court? Is that court to follow the practice of the Central Criminal Court as the Offences Against the State Act requires it to do?

The Minister and the Government would be far more honest and open with themselves, the House and the public at large if in trying to achieve what they want to achieve they came into the House and said they wanted to amend the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. I believe this is the way it should be done. The Minister and the Government are going about this in an underhand manner. I understand they have to do it in this particular way because they are not confident that they would have the majority within their party groupings or that they could depend on Members of the House who refused to vote with them recently when we were enacting the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill. Perhaps there are certain Members of the Labour Party grouping in the Government who because of their attitude during the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill forced the Minister to come into the House in the way he has done and do something which I believe he is not doing in the proper manner. If changes are necessary, if the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, is to be amended, if the Minister seeks to give them more jurisdiction than what they have, then the House and the general public should clearly know what is going on and what it is all about.

It is not right for the Minister in his opening brief this afternoon to say that this Bill is purely technical. That is wrong. I believe the Minister and the Government are wrong in their attitude. If it is for political reasons that they come before the House, hoping to achieve the changes they desire under the heading of this Bill, let them come in and say so.

Mr. Ray Burke

This surely must be a classic example of political ice skating. The Minister has introduced the Criminal Justice (Verdicts) Bill, 1976, when what is required is an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. The Minister in the first sentence of his brief said that the purpose of this Bill is purely technical. This is less than correct. If a situation has arisen which showed that the operations of the Special Criminal Court had been found to be hindered, surely the Government should introduce an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, 1939?

I can understand the political predicament the Minister finds himself in when introducing any Bill which would use the wording "Offences against the State Act". The Minister during the debate on the previous amendment in 1972 made very strong comments. I am sure that the Minister realised that if they used the proper machinery, if they used the 1939 Act, they could not guarantee the support of the Members sitting behind them in the Fine Gael Party and particularly of those in the Labour Party.

During the debate on the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill we saw Members of the Labour Party refusing to vote on amendments they put down to that Bill. Some of those who voted in favour of some amendments to that Bill did so with public declarations of their reluctance to vote. Surely the Minister must have read the situation and realised if he was to bring in an amendment to the Offences Against the State Act he had not a chance of getting it through the House without the support of the Labour Party.

The Minister feels that some measure similar to the one he has introduced today is necessary but he is disregarding the real machinery for bringing it about: the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. The Bill will go on record as being the Criminal Justice (Verdicts) Bill, 1976, and not one line of it will mention what is the parent Bill, the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. Like the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill, this Bill is making the Special Criminal Court a permanent feature of our legal proceedings. It has had to be used on three occasions only. None of us wants to see it as a permanent feature of our courts and we all hope circumstances will allow it to be disbanded as soon as possible.

If the Government are introducing legislation which they feel is necessary they should do the honourable thing and bring it in in its proper form. I endorse all the comments made by our spokesman, Deputy Collins, and I share his reservations on this legislation introduced here today. This is not the way to get around the problem which has arisen and the handling of this Bill typifies the general handling of the affairs of the country at the security level. We are now getting to the stage where we have practically a bank robbery a day and a post office robbery every second day.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not indulge in irrelevancies. He must confine his remarks to the subject matter of the measure before the House.

Mr. Ray Burke

I was just coming back to it. The handling of legislation by this Government has been appalling. That is now recognised throughout the length and breadth of the land. The matter before us today typifies the problem the people face under a group in the guise of a Government. This is not the way to handle the problem and it is less than honest of the Minister to say it is a purely technical matter.

Major de Valera

The point has already been made that this Bill stands on its own legs, so to speak, and is not related to the specific provisions for Special Courts, which we all agree are unnecessary, or to the jurisdiction generally as set up for instance by the Offences Against the State Act. This point has already been made by other speakers but I wish to make it from a different angle.

If this Bill were specifically for that purpose it is only proper that it should be related to the extraordinary jurisdiction which it was regrettably necessary to set up to deal with an extraordinary situation. This Bill, as a general amendment of the criminal law, requires considerably more scrutiny than it would if it were an amendment of what I have called the special or extraordinary code regrettably made necessary by extraordinary crimes of organised violence. This is the essence of the whole thing.

The problems which have arisen and which this Bill seeks to deal with would have called for nothing more than minor amendments in the law. They would have been merely adjustments of the jurisdiction of the District Courts in certain regards and major adjustments of the jurisdiction in other regards were it not for the fact that organised crimes of violence made it necessary to have this extraordinary code.

The primary purpose of this Bill is clearly not to provide for amending the jurisdiction of the District Court. If it were presented in that form there would be a good deal of opposition to certain interpretations of the Bill and the remainder would be accepted as convenient amendments. I could not see the Dáil accepting the Bill on this basis. Therefore, and this is the inescapable logic of that situation, essentially this Bill is intended to be applied as an amendment of the extraordinary or special criminal code enacted for a special or extraordinary reason. It is mainly intended to apply to cases of extraordinary jurisdiction to be heard and determined by courts of extraordinary criminal jurisdiction.

I want to ask the Minister to consider what has been said by Deputy Collins and Deputy Burke from another point of view. I want him to consider it from the point of view I am now putting forward which is a more technical point of view. There is a consequence to this which, in general terms, lawyers will find disturbing. If the Minister had done what Deputies on this side of the House suggested he should do and brought this in as part of the extraordinary code of special criminal jurisdiction the Bill would have carried with it the limitations of that extraordinary code which at this moment we are not seeking to confine and in the specific context of that code, I think the Minister would get support and agreement from the House as a whole.

If the Bill were brought in in that context, as it should have been, it would be hedged in, so to speak, by its general setting in the appropriate code of extraordinary criminal jurisdiction. I make these points in an effort to be clear. First, the Bill is intended to be part of that code and, by including it where it should be, a good deal of this debate and the Bill's possible consequences could be avoided and a greater degree of certainty would be brought into the law.

Secondly, bringing it in in this way without having it in its proper setting means that the Bill has consequences for our criminal jurisdiction and the criminal law of the State in general which are open to serious criticism. When one excludes the necessity for the extraordinary or special criminal jurisdiction it is sometimes hard to make these distinctions clear but, in this case, that could have been done very simply by amending the title and setting the Bill in its proper context in the code. If it were so placed in the code, generally speaking being related to the code, then the Minister would have no difficulty in getting support from this side of the House for these provisions. The Minister would command more general support for the Bill if it were made more precise by being included where it really belongs.

I have to consider this Bill in two parts. I have to consider it with relation to the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court to deal with special and extraordinary crimes and I must deal with it as part of our more general criminal jurisdiction affecting all crime. Because it is presented in this way, its ramifications extend far beyond what is clearly the Minister's main purpose as set out in his opening statement today.

Let us consider it first from the point of view of the Special Criminal Court. The crimes visualised there are essentially those of organised violence, of crimes that have associated with them two features that defeat the fair or practicable application of the ordinary criminal law of the land. These features are, first, organised violence and, secondly, intimidation.

I know I may be over-simplifying the case when I put it in that way but I will not be very far wrong if I say that this extraordinary criminal jurisdiction and the Special Criminal Court are necessary because, unhappily, there has been a wave of organised violence. It is not spontaneous, individual violence but organised violence such as assassinations, armed robberies, train robberies and other crimes of that kind. Here, it is impossible to apply the law because of the intimidation of individual justices, or even of individual judges who cannot be protected and, in particular, the intimidation of juries. It is difficult to get a fair and a just verdict and we must protect those who are called on to convict. There was one question with regard to subsection (2) which the Minister stated was rather technical; that phrase will detain me and it might even alarm me. However, except for the comment there and a question that arises with regard to insanity I think the Minister should get this Bill.

I am now making the distinction that this Bill is brought in as a general amendment to criminal law in the whole area where it should have been in the specific area of extraordinary criminal jurisdiction and I will deal with it on both bases. In the context of its extraordinary jurisdiction, the first point is that it is eminently reasonable that the Special Criminal Court should have the powers a jury would have of alternative conviction. Generally speaking, that is what is contained in section 1 (1) of this Bill. That is not only a reasonable requirement but it is a necessary one for the Special Criminal Court and for this extraordinary special criminal jurisdiction. The reason can be given quite simply. It is that you cannot have the normal procedure in these cases of trial by indictment before a jury because the organisation of the crimes and the crimes concerned defeat justice by conspiracy in the first case and by intimidation in the second case. We cannot cavil at subsection (1) so far as the Special Criminal Court is concerned. I will go even further: I think the Minister needed this amendment.

Mr. Cooney

Deputy Collins does not agree with the Deputy.

Major de Valera

The Minister needed the amendment in principle for the special code——

Mr. Cooney

The Deputy's argument is contrary to that of Deputy Collins.

Major de Valera

Does that really matter if we are trying to analyse what is in the Bill?

Mr. Cooney

I agree with the Deputy and I welcome his views.

Major de Valera

Is the Minister saying that our role is to find fault and not to make an effort to be reasonable?

Mr. Cooney

I have said I welcome the Deputy's views.

Major de Valera

I may not have heard all of Deputy Collins's contribution. I am a little taken by surprise by the Minister. The points I am making are specifically in relation to this provision being tied specifically to the Special Criminal Court's code. I am approaching the matter in general terms. I can see that another Deputy—it might even happen in my case if I took it from another point of view—could criticise the provision on the grounds that it might be too easy to evade responsibility of proof. I am assuming we are still going to have the responsible standards of prosecution that heretofore we have had. If these standards are going to slide we are in a different area completely. I was assuming that everything was rite esse acta, that it was to be properly done.

Subsection (2) to my mind may have a certain ambiguity and would have less ambiguity if it were in the code to which it specifically belongs. Reading the subsection as it stands, because this Bill stands by itself, the interpretation of the phrase at the end of the section "...after trial for the offence specifically charged", seems to me to involve a certain ambiguity. The subsection states:

Where a person is lawfully before a court charged with an offence, the court shall have jurisdiction to convict the person, on a plea of guilty, of another offence with which he is not specifically charged and of which he could be convicted by that court after trial for the offence specifically charged.

On that wording, does it really mean that if a man pleads guilty to manslaughter when charged with murder, say—I think that would come within the section here and it is very common—he could be convicted of manslaughter?

My worry is that subsection (1) already, so to speak, confers this power if it is interpreted in that way and if this is the interpretation, is this not tautology? Unless I read subsection (1) incorrectly we are putting the Special Criminal Court or any special court of that nature in the same position as a judge and jury but, under the general criminal law as we have it, both common law and the enactments of the general criminal law, subsection (2) would not be generally necessary for trial before a jury. It, therefore, seems to me—perhaps, an erroneous view—that if this was all the Minister required, subsection (1) would give him what he wants as, if I read it correctly, it gives the criminal court the same jurisdiction as if it were a court with a jury. It says "...shall have the same jurisdiction and powers..." which would allow the court to convict of manslaughter when the charge was murder. This has been spelled out by the Minister.

Mr. Cooney

I think the distinction between subsection (1) and subsection (2) is that in subsection (1) we have the case where there is not a plea but subsection (2) envisages the case where there is a plea.

Major de Valera

I am a long time away from the law but suppose a man were charged in the Central Criminal Court with murder before judge and jury, is there not jurisdiction in that court to accept a plea of manslaughter?

Mr. Cooney

Yes.

Major de Valera

Then it seems that subsection (1) covers all the Minister wants to do. It confers "the same jurisdiction and powers". I am labouring the point, not because I object to the doing of it—I would not even object to repeating the point ex majorem cautela or whatever way you wish to put it, but the argument I am developing might lead to a different construction of subsection (2). Subsection (2) may be open to this construction: it may include the case we have already mentioned, the jurisdiction of what I might call cognate or related crime. Is it not also possible that it could be read this way: where a person pleads guilty of a crime with which he is not specifically charged he could be convicted of any other crime, whatever he pleaded, because the court would have jurisdiction to convict him subject only to what is covered by “already convicted” or “already acquitted”?

Is there not a danger that this perverse construction could be put on that section, that he could only be convicted of a crime with which he could be charged after he was either convicted or acquitted of the original crime? Suppose the man pleaded guilty to manslaughter instead of murder. Suppose he had been convicted either of manslaughter or murder, thereafter virtually all crimes of that particular homicide would be excluded and he could set up a defence under this section. Again, this arises from the way the subsection appears, standing by itself and covering the whole jurisdiction.

Section 39 (1) of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914, is explicit enough. I will leave all that with the Minister. I am not interested in trying to argue my opinion but the Minister knows that criminal law is extremely technical and will be construed technically for the accused. Does this restrict the conviction under subsection (2) to offences which are not in the category I have outlined because they would already have been convicted or acquitted in the first instance? That is an impression. I do not think it is our duty to set ourselves up as technicians here and it should be sufficient to raise the question, freely conceding that the question may not have substance. It is right that the Minister, and his advisers, should watch that point.

It would not be a good thing to import it into our law as a whole. It is like what we do for penalty, where an accused asks to have other offences taken into account when he is being sentenced. It seems that the effect of this section is that an accused can only be convicted of an offence with which he is not specifically charged if it was one which he could have been convicted of after trial. Looking at it in a perverse way, it might rule out the cognate type of trial. There is another way of interpreting it and, perhaps, it is a more natural way. An accused could almost plead guilty to anything as an alternative but is that another trap? If I am wrong in the way I put it first, an exclusion, would I be correct in saying that if he was charged with murder he could plead guilty to some crime that would, in general, be thought to be unrelated?

Mr. Cooney

Only when the prosecution agrees and, more important, that the court accepts it.

Major de Valera

I know that but here, again, is the objection to having this form in the Bill. The Minister stated that this is very technical but it is something more than what the Minister stated in his explanation. I am not accusing the Minister of concealment or anything because he pointed out that it was technical. It is the very technicality and the different ways this simple phraseology can be read that causes me to ask the Minister to look at the matter again.

On the question of the person already convicted, I agree with the Minister that it is a pretty infrequent occurrence but it could be of specific importance in the code I am thinking of. The more important is the case of insanity. On that question I am more disturbed. I am up against the difficulty that in all criminal jurisdiction, the amendment of criminal law and the provision for such things as a defence of insanity the courts have always been very sensitive to the danger of the misuse of the provision. In the normal case of ordinary jurisdiction, the plea of insanity has been mainly used in the past to escape capital punishment, to escape in a charge of murder where the maximum penalty was concerned. It is in that form that it is best known to our law. However, even in that simple context the courts, the Legislature and the public were extremely sensitive to the dangers of a provision like that being misapplied to put someone away and to effect a conviction where it might not have been possible to get it otherwise.

It is not unknown in another part of the world, either because of difficulty of convicting or the political undesirability of convicting to escape awkward political consequences, for people to be committed as of unsound mind. We know it has happened and, thank God, there has never been any suspicion of it having happened here.

Mr. Cooney

There is no habeas corpus in the place the Deputy is referring to.

Major de Valera

That is a good point pro tantum but the law has always been very careful to provide safeguards in a case like this. The traditional safeguard was, of course, a jury of one's peers. It was an assurance that either the foibles of a particular judge or the viewpoint of the Constitution did not prevail in the matter. I have a worry—and it would not be helpful to be too explicit, as the Minister will appreciate—that in conferring this kind of jurisdiction on these extraordinary courts we are opening the door to something undesirable. Again, I would settle for the setting of the Bill in what I have called its proper or natural context, but I do not think that the giving of a power to any court above a district court without safeguards is a little disturbing. One might argue that it is even more disturbing to put it in its own special context. I, therefore, feel a little unhappy about this plea.

Mr. Esmonde

Is it not a fact that on the civil side of lunacy—that is what we are really dealing with at the moment, a person of unsound mind— both the High Court judge on his own and the Circuit Court judge on his own have the responsibility of deciding whether a person should be put away for a while?

Major de Valera

Yes. Quite frankly, I am not in a position to argue in detail with the Deputy. I still feel there is a built-in precaution in the criminal code in that matters of this nature are generally decided by a jury. Why do I jib at giving this power to a special court? Special courts of their nature tend to be driven by circumstances to a particular point of view. I would like to see a more positive stop to possible abuses of the nature I have indicated.

Mr. Cooney

In fairness, I should say that our experience does not bear out the Deputy's suggestion that these courts are driven by a special point of view.

Major de Valera

The Minister will take me as agreeing with this and accepting it wholeheartedly at the moment, but it is part of our role as legislators to consider possibilities in the future and it is from this point of view that I wish to be helpful. From the Minister's remarks I think he understands the point I have made. It would not be helpful to spell it out in any more detail and I will ask him to consider it. It does mean that these provisions should be more circumscribed than they are. The lack of circumscription seems largely to stem from the setting or absence of setting of the Bill. The setting of the Bill is at large in our criminal jurisdiction rather than the setting of it in the particular jurisdiction for which it is mainly intended. The amendments in regard to the District Court appear to be mainly considered as being put in for convenience. If the District Court is getting more than would be convenient, it is because it would be rather inconvenient to make fine divisions. I can see that point of view. I have misgivings about the Bill, particularly in regard to the three points I have mentioned. Its setting colours and affects the whole concept and interpretation in the broadest sense of the provisions in the Bill. The possible interpretations of the phrase in subsection (2) "of which he could be convicted by that court after trial for the offence specifically charged" seems to me to be open to possible meanings or applied as meaning something that was not intended. Lastly, it is with a great deal of a lawyer's conservative feeling that I urge caution in the extension of any jurisdiction that enables any court or administration to set up as a legal fact through conviction, plea or otherwise, that an individual citizen is not fully compos mentis, in other words, is of unsound mind, and that that being so that he can be by that device committed indefinitely.

I know and accept, and, indeed, wish to endorse what the Minister said but we are looking at law being made. We know that abuses of that nature have not been unknown in the world's history. Nevertheless, bearing in mind those possibilities and with those warnings of experience, I urge the Minister to ask his advisers to consider again very carefully the circumscription of any power that could be abused. It is not sufficient to rely on present undoubted integrities in all quarters. I am worried about a possible wider, long-term interpretation that could develop gradually in another context. A lot of trouble could be avoided were this Bill set in its proper context.

Mr. Esmonde

I will be very brief because I believe Deputy O'Malley has been waiting to make a contribution. Deputy de Valera's contribution has been an interesting one. I agree with a lot of what he says on the basis on which he approached the matter—we have got to look at things in the context in which we find a particular court performing its functions. If we take the example of the Special Criminal Court, dealing with rather serious criminal offences we know now that, as a result of the recent decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal in the Director of Public Prosecutions versus Rice, a difficulty has occurred. That decision highlights the fact that there might be certain reliefs not open to an accused person in the management and running of his business before that court in the trial of criminal offences.

This Bill goes further than that court. It does something here that is of some importance. It establishes a new principle in the sense that it puts it in writing. There has always been in the public mind a feeling that where the court accepts a plea of a lesser offence to that with which a person is charged something has happened along the line, that somebody has been given a little preference or allowed to pull strings. It is stated in subsection (2) that a person's plea is accepted in the court. Every lawyer knows of cases where a person has offered a plea in court which has not been accepted, or has been put aside, the main charge originally preferred has gone ahead and the person has been acquitted. I am talking now about jury cases where I have seen this happen and where very often the person has been acquitted by the jury. In such cases many people felt the acquittal given by the jury might not have been given but for the fact that the plea had been made by the accused. In other words, possibly there was not a reasonable, independent consideration of the original charge. This section, although it may deal with other matters, does bring that point into proper perspective—the plea is there and, if it is acceptable subsequently, the matter can be dealt with on the basis of the offence to which a person pleads.

I do not want to go any further on these alternative pleas. But Deputy de Valera did mention the question of the plea of insanity. In his opening statement the Minister very succinctly put the situation that it can arise in relation to these pleas of insanity. Both the Minister and Deputy de Valera quite rightly pointed to the fact that where a plea of insanity in a criminal case has arisen it has always been dealt with by a jury set up for that purpose; if it be, first of all, the plea of whether a person is fit to give instructions to stand trial that is dealt with as a separate matter before a jury. If we have a court of qualified judges on the bench of a level to deal with criminal trials and with the sentencing of criminals that have been dealt with before juries—and remember one is dealing with three judges, not merely one; therefore, one is virtually dealing with a mini jury of judges—it is right and this has been more or less explicitly indicated in that decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal, that that court should have the same power as is given to a jury in trial of criminal cases. Otherwise one might say, about the Special Criminal Court, that that court is not a proper court of criminal law. This is a very important matter and it should be seen that they have that power.

Deputy de Valera quite rightly said that the plea of insanity has often and mainly been used where there is a charge that a capital offence has been committed. I have taken part in such trials. Most Deputies who are lawyers have had something to do with a murder trial at some stage in their careers. Most of us have had the very awkward decision to make of whether we should raise the issue of whether or not a person is fit to plead. It is a very agonising decision for a lawyer—because we all know that if one fails on that plea the alternative plea which would normally follow—namely, the plea of insanity on the actual offence itself which arises as an issue in the trial— can go overboard and one can fail on it. Let me come back to the question of whether it is right that judges should have the power a jury has on this——

Major de Valera

Whether it is a plea at the beginning of inability to stand trial or at the end a determination by the jury, in either case the jury determines it.

Mr. Esmonde

Exactly. That is what I am coming to. The important thing is this. If a court is going to try the facts of a case they should have the same powers as a jury in deciding facts. That is axiomatic. One cannot deny the accused person the same pleas he has in an ordinary criminal court. If so, one would be curtailing a fair realm of the application of the principles of justice as we know it in this island on a trial of criminal offence. This has arisen more by accident than anything else. I do not think it was appreciated earlier on.

I want to go now to the little— perhaps I should not use the word "little"—danger to which Deputy de Valera referred, mainly, the question of whether it is right that a judge, or judges, should decide a matter that has always been dealt with by one's peers on the question of whether or not there is insanity. Instanced already during Deputy de Valera's speech is the fact that this decision is made very frequently in the wards of court offices.

I do want to deal with another matter which is peculiar to our law. If something goes wrong at a judge and jury trial, the person to whom one goes, one's ultimate relief, is under the writ of habeas corpus, and that is decided by a judge. This is our full stop where the principles of liberty of the subject are concerned. Ultimately one ends up with a judge deciding. That is an enormous and important decision that has to be made. It is a judge who decides it and not a jury.

Mr. O'Malley

Because it is a question of law and not a fact.

Mr. Esmonde

Every question of law has to be based on fact and the interpretation of the principles of the fact that are involved in a case. It is the ultimate court that the individual goes for his civil liberties to be established. That has always been the case.

Mr. O'Malley

Not really, as no question of fact arises.

Mr. Esmonde

Yes, one must take the facts into consideration.

Mr. Cooney

It has to be to establish the quick finding of the law on those facts.

Mr. O'Malley

That would be an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal. Habeas corpus is the biggest part of it if one is in custody.

Mr. Esmonde

If there is a perverse verdict on facts given by a jury, what is the recourse? The only recourse he has is habeas corpus. He may go well beyond appeal. There may be no appeal.

Mr. O'Malley

No.

Mr. Esmonde

I disagree with the Deputy on this, because I take the view and I think the Deputy will find, that one has to go to the facts as well as the principles of law. It is principles that are applied to facts. It is interesting to note that that is the structure in our law and that is the ultimate court of recourse to which people have to go.

Those are the only points I want to make, but I hope the public appreciate that what the Minister is trying to do here is to have available to the accused person in these courts on criminal trials the same right as he would have if he was tried before a jury. That is an old principle of our law and we try to keep to it as closely as we can.

Mr. O'Malley

I am suspicious of this Bill for the sort of reasons that have been set out in some detail by Deputy G. Collins and Deputy de Valera. I want to go into certain aspects of what they said in relation to the Bill.

The first thing is that this Bill is before the House today because of the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal on 12th November last in Rice's case. If Rice's case had not been decided as it was by the Court of Criminal Appeal, there would be no Bill here today to do this. Therefore, it is important that we should discover what Rice's case decided. In particular we should be careful to ensure that the Bill does no more than what Rice's case created the necessity for, if one accepts that there is a necessity for the change in question and that is a matter that need not necessarily be taken as agreed. I quote from a copy which the Minister kindly lent me of the judgment which was delivered by Mr. Justice Henchy on behalf of that court. On page 7 he says:

While the inclusion of alternative counts in an indictment is procedural, the power to return a verdict of guilty of an offence not charged is a matter of jurisdiction which must be shown to exist under either common law or statute. The Special Criminal Court being a creature of statute, such jurisdiction could be found only in the statutory provisions investing it with jurisdiction.

The statutory provisions on which the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court rests are those in section 41.

That is referring to the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, and it is clear that what was intended there was section 43, and that is possibly a misprint because section 43 is the one dealing with the jurisdiction. The judgment goes on to say:

These cannot be read as endowing the Court with a jurisdiction to convict an accused of an offence other than one for which he has been indicted. We must, therefore, sustain the grounds of appeal alleging that the conviction and sentence in this case were made and imposed without jurisdiction. The conviction and sentence must, as a result, be quashed.

That is the kernel of the judgment in Rice's case and it is founded on the fact that the Special Criminal Court, being a creature of statute, has only the jurisdiction which the statute establishing it gives to it. The court points out that section 43 does not contain certain matters, even though section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939 does contain a great many matters in which jurisdiction is conferred.

We should ask ourselves a question straight away. Was it quite possibly the intention of the Legislature in 1939, because of the special specific nature of the Special Criminal Court, not to confer certain jurisdictions? It is very hard after this stretch of time to answer that with certainty but it is possible— one cannot put it any further than that —that the Legislature in 1939 in establishing this special court under the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, wanted only to give it jurisdiction which is not as great as that of the Central Criminal Court.

The possibility of this thesis being true is borne out by the fairly elaborate drafting of section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. It sets out what the jurisdiction will be and what it calls "the following ancillary jurisdictions" of which there were six different categories set out. The six different categories that are set out as the ancillary jurisdictions need not have been specified if section 43 was drafted in a different way, and need run to only two or three lines to say that the Special Criminal Court shall have all the powers and jurisdictions of the Central Criminal Court and all the powers and jurisdictions which will be exercisable either by the judge or by the jury in the Central Criminal Court. However, it did not do that. It could have done that in two or three lines.

This difficulty that came to light in Rice's case would not have occurred if that was the way section 43 was drafted. I would say when a draftsman applied his mind in 1939 to the conferring of jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court that is possibly the way he approached it. It would seem the logical way from his own point of view, the easiest way to do, but he did not do it that way, because the desire, apparently, at the time was that there would be certain limitations on the jurisdictions of the Special Criminal Court. Probably that desire was there because of the unusual, unique nature of the Special Criminal Court.

The section went on to set out these six ancillary jurisdictions and it deliberately omitted the minor ancillary jurisdiction, and it is fair to say it is only a comparatively minor one, which gave rise to the difficulty in Rice's case and which led to the quashing of the conviction there. The first thing I want to say in relation to the drafting of the statutory provision to overcome what arose in Rice's case is that the obvious, normal way to draft that statutory provision would be to introduce here a Bill which would be to add an ancillary jurisdiction to subsection (1) of section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, and it would become paragraph (g) of subsection (1) immediately after (f). The incredible thing is that that was not done but instead a Bill which has the appearance of being in some way a substantive Bill in its own right and which deals with matters outside of any difficulties that may have arisen as a result of the decision in Rice's case is brought in rather than an amending Bill. The Minister and those who drafted the Bill performed quite a feat.

They produced a Bill about section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act and virtually about that only and they never mentioned the section or the Act. What is even a greater achievement is the Minister's speech here today. It goes into some detail and succeeds in avoiding any mention of section 43, or, indeed, of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, at all. Whoever drafted this speech is entitled to at least as much credit as whoever drafted the Bill because without reading Rice's case, the references right through are to sections 41, 43 and 47 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939.

The whole thing is about section 43 in particular and sections 41 and 47 in an ancillary way, and the Act that we are here to amend today is not mentioned at all. The section that we are here to amend is not mentioned. No recourse is had to the normal method of amending that section by adding a seventh ancillary jurisdiction at the end of subsection (1) of section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939. Instead, a new Bill which makes no mention of the Offences Against the State Act is produced. As well as covering what the Minister or the prosecution might consider a defect in section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, it goes on to extend this amendment not just to the Special Criminal Court but to the District Court also. I think that the District Court was dragged into this not because there was any necessity or demand for it but in order to give an air of respectability to the whole introduction and passage of the Bill.

The Minister seeks to give the impression that this is a minor technical amendment because of a decision in a case, that it has nothing to do with the Offences Against the State Act at all, that it is simply to do with procedure in non-jury courts and that these include the District Court. Therefore, the District Court must be lumped in with this as well. The District Court has existed in this country for 50-odd years. I have never heard of the problem that the Minister alleges he is solving in this Bill being a problem in the District Court. I practised there for six years.

Mr. Cooney

It is only a matter of procedure.

Mr. O'Malley

I never saw the difficulty arise. I saw pleas accepted on lesser counts and people found guilty of lesser offences. No difficulties seemed to arise. There has been no demand from anybody that I am aware of. It seems to me that the Minister is trying to plug holes where they do not exist, and where they may never have existed and where for 50 years no difficulty has arisen. Apart from the fact that it is proposed to extend the right to plead guilty to a lesser offence to the District Court, I cannot see any point in the repeal of subsection (1) of section 39 of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, and its re-enactment again in different words but in the same sense in this Bill in subsection (2). Section 39 (1) of the 1914 Act reads:

Where a prisoner is arraigned on an indictment for any offence, and can lawfully be convicted on such indictment of some other offence not charged in such indictment, he may plead not guilty of the offence charged in the indictment, but guilty of such other offence.

The offence which subsection (2) of section 1 of this Bill has is exactly the same.

Mr. Cooney

But to make sure that it applies to the Special Court and indictment.

Mr. O'Malley

I suggest to the Minister that it already applies to the Special Criminal Court because the start of it reads "where a prisoner is arraigned on an indictment..." If he is charged in the Special Criminal Court, he is arraigned on an indictment.

Mr. Cooney

That is very likely to be so but in regard to the Special Court it removes all doubt. With regard to the District Court it makes the matter clear.

Mr. O'Malley

People have been pleading guilty to lesser offences in the District Court since 1924 when it was established.

Mr. Cooney

That is the point I am making. The difficulty never arose until Rice's case was taken. The decision in Rice's case now applies.

Mr. O'Malley

Rice's case was decided on the 12th November, 1975, and it is now the 6th April which is five or six months later. I am not aware that anyone has even bothered to take the point.

Mr. Cooney

Happily nobody has done so.

Mr. O'Malley

I do not accept at all that it is so, but if it is there must be thousands of people who have pleaded guilty in the District Court, who did not properly do so, and who were therefore, improperly convicted.

Mr. Cooney

Not necessarily. If a case should be contested and the High Court finds that procedure was wrong, then that might be said, but no such case has been taken in the High Court. The law as it stands in the absence of such a case has been that they were properly convicted. This Bill is to ensure that there will be no grounds of grievance in the future.

Mr. O'Malley

I feel that bringing the District Court into this is only trying to divert attention away from the fact that it is basically concerned with the Special Criminal Court. We are in the position, leaving the District Court out of it for the time being, that the Court of Criminal Appeal in Rice's case discussed at great length in the judgment the various elements that go to make up the statutory jurisdiction conferred on the Special Court, and having considered the matter at great length finds that section 43 is lacking in a slight way in the sort of jurisdiction that is contained in subsection (1) of section 1 and, therefore, the man in question was entitled to be acquitted. The obvious conclusion to draw from that, and from any normal reading of the judgment, and of the difficulty that it gave rise to, is that it can be cured by an amendment to section 43. If the Minister wants to bring in the District Court—I do not know that there is a necessity for that—he could produce another section of another couple of lines and say that the same thing would apply in the District Court. That is not done. There is colossal effort, which makes me suspicious, and I think would make anybody suspicious, to avoid talking about the very thing that we are doing. What we are doing, even though we are doing it in a roundabout fashion, is amending section 43 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939 to confer a greater jurisdiction on the Special Criminal Court.

Debate adjourned.