I thank Senator Tuffy for raising this matter on the Adjournment. I assure her that the Government shares her concerns that no opportunity is given to convicted sex offenders to take advantage of any differences in the law and arrangements in place in the different legal jurisdictions.
I will set out briefly the legal position regarding convicted sex offenders who either have served a sentence imposed or did not receive a sentence of imprisonment. The Act of 2001 put in place a notification system under which, to put it generally, convicted sex offenders are obliged to notify the Garda Síochána of where they reside and any changes to their addresses or their names. It is modelled on similar systems in other common law jurisdictions and, in particular, because of our common travel arrangements with the United Kingdom, it is closely aligned to its system. When the Sex Offenders Act was being prepared we not only made a conscious decision to model it closely on the UK model but also to improve it in many respects to take account of our own circumstances. Among the major differences were a shorter period in which to notify the Garda, provisions requiring offenders convicted in Ireland to notify the Garda when going abroad and, significantly, provisions requiring offenders convicted abroad who had a similar notification obligation in their own country to notify the Garda when coming to Ireland, whether to live or for shorter stays.
The UK has since updated its notification procedures and I have instructed my officials to examine our laws to identify what changes would be desirable so that sex offenders would experience broadly similar regimes here and in the UK and, in particular, in Northern Ireland. One change already announced is that failure to comply with the notification procedures will be an arrestable offence. This is included in the Criminal Law (Trafficking in Persons and Sexual Offences) Bill, which is being drafted in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and is to come before the Dáil soon.
Another area we are particularly looking at is the position of foreign sex offenders who come to Ireland. Despite recent media reports, it is important to emphasise that we are probably the only country that requires persons convicted abroad of sex offences to comply automatically with notification procedures here when they would have to comply with similar procedures in the country in which they were convicted. In that respect, controls here are already more severe than elsewhere, and it would be wrong to suggest our regime encourages sex offenders from abroad to come to Ireland. However, I am not complacent and, as I have already indicated, we are examining the possibility of tightening even further the operation of the notification procedures in so far as they apply to sex offenders convicted either here or abroad.
Legal provisions are only part of the picture. We also have to keep under review, and improve as necessary, the arrangements and procedures in place to enforce these provisions and ensure the safety of the community. Next Monday the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office and I will sign a memorandum of understanding on information sharing arrangements between Ireland and the UK on sex offenders. The signing at Hillsborough will be co-hosted by the Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office. This memorandum of understanding was negotiated between my Department and the Home Office, with input from the Northern Ireland Office. It relates to information about persons travelling between Ireland and the UK who are subject to sex offender notification requirements in their own jurisdictions. It therefore covers sex offenders travelling between Ireland, Britain and Northern Ireland.
The purpose of the memorandum of understanding is that information of this type will be shared between the Garda Síochána and British police forces for the purposes of protecting the public from the risks presented by sex offenders and investigating serious sexual offences. It covers any information necessary to achieve these purposes. It will cover soft and hard information. The memorandum of understanding is part of the work undertaken following the intergovernmental agreement on North-South co-operation on criminal justice matters signed on behalf of the Irish and British Governments in July 2005. Under the agreement, a registered sex offender advisory group has been established consisting of representatives of the Garda Síochána, Police Service of Northern Ireland, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Northern Ireland Office. As part of its work, this group evaluates the potential for sharing information, examining the registration criteria in both jurisdictions for sex offenders and identifying areas for further co-operation. As part of their ongoing co-operation, the Garda Síochána and the PSNI examine on an ongoing basis how the means of transmitting information to each other and the training given might be improved. I commend both forces on their adoption of positive measures to improve the flow of information and expertise between the two jurisdictions.
As a result of the memorandum of understanding, the exchange of such information between the Garda Síochána and British police forces, which has already been taking place for some time, is being put on a formal footing. The memorandum of understanding will be underpinned by further provisions contained in the Criminal Law (Trafficking in Persons and Sexual Offences) Bill. Head 19 of that Bill, which can be viewed on my Department's website, places a statutory obligation on the Garda Commissioner and the director of the probation and welfare service to establish arrangements to assess and manage the risk posed by convicted sex offenders and to share that information with one another. Such information may also be shared with the relevant authority in another jurisdiction in accordance with the terms of any written agreement or understanding for the reciprocal exchange of the information.
The memorandum of understanding with the UK is the first agreement of its kind and will therefore enable such information to be shared with UK police forces, including the PSNI. If the memorandum of understanding operates successfully — I am confident it will — there may be scope for similar agreements with other countries. The two Governments undertake in the memorandum of understanding to discuss its use and effectiveness. In this way, any improvements which might be desirable will be considered.
The law and procedures currently in place provide a high degree of protection from foreign convicted sex offenders who visit or reside in Ireland. However, it does not apply to people who are not required by their native jurisdictions to register and that is an obvious deficiency. We must ask ourselves if it is reasonable that a person who has no registration in his or her country where he or she commits an offence fails to register if he or she comes to Ireland because he or she is ignorant of the law here. It is possible to take two views on that issue and we will examine it to the best of our abilities and see how it can be fairly dealt with. We live in a common travel area in the EU and if somebody from the Czech Republic, for example, is not required to register at home and had never even heard of the concept of registration, it would be harsh to suddenly arrest him or her in Ireland for failing to register. We must think about this.
All laws and procedures must be kept constantly under review to ensure they are adapted and improved in response to developments in society and the behaviour of sex offenders. I attach a very high priority to this work. Given that we live in a society that has no border checks, people can come into this jurisdiction in many places without being checked. Therefore, there is no foolproof system and we can only do our best. We cannot provide a secure border through which paedophiles cannot pass and we therefore must deal with imperfections which arise from the freedom of travel in the common travel area and in the EU generally.
