I thank you for allowing me raise this important matter on the Adjournment. Recent reports on the failure of the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute in a number of high profile cases has caused great public unease. For example, the doctor at the centre of the Drogheda hospital sex scandal was reportedly the subject of a number of complaints which went to the DPP's office but did not result in a prosecution.
We have also seen reports recently of a number of horrendous child sexual abuse cases where a conviction would probably have been achieved much earlier had the DPP's office been prepared to prosecute on foot of earlier complaints. The public unease surrounding the DPP's decisions in these cases is largely due to the fact that the DPP's decision was taken in secret and he was not answerable to anybody.
The DPP is statutorily independent in the exercise of his functions. That has been taken to mean that he can take decisions in secret and not be accountable to anybody for those decisions. That is a false conclusion. Independence and accountability are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are complementary.
The accountability deficit in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is all the more remarkable when set against international comparisons. All other common law jurisdictions provide for a system of prosecutorial accountability. In these other jurisdictions, the public prosecutor is accountable either to a parliamentary, judicial or administrative forum.
This secretive, unaccountable decision-making process in the Irish DPP's office must be abandoned. The Government should allow for a proper system of judicial review of decisions of the DPP. I say that because the Supreme Court abdicated all responsibility in this matter in a decision in 1986. In addition, the Government should provide a mechanism whereby the DPP should be forced to explain his decision, in certain but not all circumstances, to prosecute or, more likely, not to prosecute.
Transparency of procedures is an essential prerequisite for full public confidence in the administration of justice. Nobody would suggest, for example, that the Taoiseach or his Ministers should be anything other than independent in the discharge of their functions, yet it could not be reasonably argued that this means they should not be accountable to the Dáil for the exercise of those functions. There is nothing inconsistent in saying that a person may reach an independent decision but that he or she must then be prepared to justify that decision to another forum. This will not compromise the independent nature of the decision-making process; it will merely ensure that the decision has been reached in a proper and fair manner and will be seen to have been so reached.
It is of paramount importance in a democracy that the public should have full confidence in the administration of justice. Secrecy, lack of openness and lack of accountability in the decision-making process in the Office of the DPP have inevitably brought about a situation where public confidence in that office has been badly shaken. That is a potentially catastrophic development. Procedures to redress this fundamental accountability deficit at the heart of the criminal prosecution system are long overdue. I ask the Minister to accept that proposition and to outline the Government's proposals for dealing with the matter.
