Clare Daly
Ceist:61. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the reason for the repeated delay in publication of the coroners (amendment) Bill; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22651/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 23 May 2018
Ceisteanna (61)
Freagraí scríofa
The Coroners (Amendment) Bill is a very important Bill, on which my officials have already completed a great deal of work. It is a priority for me for the Government as reflected by its inclusion on the Government’s list of priority legislation for publication during this Oireachtas session.
This Bill will introduce mandatory reporting, post-mortem examination and inquest in cases of direct or indirect maternal death. It will also extend the legal aid provisions, introduced for certain inquests in the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2013, to a family member of the deceased at an inquest into a maternal death.
This will ensure clarity for responsible persons, including hospital authorities, and will support the development of transparent and accountable oversight for checking and investigating certain types of death. Most importantly, it will provide clarity and transparency for bereaved families. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the contribution made by the Deputy to the Bill, through her earlier Private Member's Bill.
It will be an offence for a responsible person not to report a mandatory reportable death to the coroner. There will also be improved provisions on the reporting of certain peri-natal and infant deaths, to support prompt and transparent provision of information by health and other authorities to bereaved families. More broadly, the Bill will also update and strengthen the legal powers available to coroners regarding reporting, post-mortem and inquest of unnatural deaths; and including more robust powers to compel attendance by witnesses and the production of documents at inquest. The Bill will also allow a wider scope for inquests, from investigating the immediate cause of death to establishing the circumstances in which the death occurred.
The public importance of effective and transparent independent investigation in such cases is obvious. In addition, these measures will strengthen our compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.
We are awaiting a further full draft of the Bill from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. My officials continue to work intensively to advance this work. However, I agree that it is taking considerably longer than I had wished or that we had intended to finalise the Bill for publication.
The reasons for this are genuine. It is a complex Bill, both in drafting terms and on the substance. While the Deputy's Bill and much of the work done by my Department on reforms relate to the text of the 2007 Coroners Bill, that Bill provided for a comprehensive reform of coronial law and of the administrative structure of the coroner service in Ireland. That administrative reform requires significant updating and is not yet ready to proceed. In drafting terms, it is a complex exercise to translate the key reforms we are seeking to make now, which are derived from or drafted in the framework of the 2007 Bill, into the structure and language of the existing legislation which dates from 1962.
In addition, the Deputy will be aware there is a huge amount of overall legislative activity – and even of priority legislation - at present in relation both to Private Members’ Bills, and to the Government’s legislative programme, across a large number of fronts. The volume of legislative work means that the resource of the specialists who are available to do it is often spread very thinly.
I am currently in further contact with the Attorney General to establish how the drafting can most quickly be completed. The Office of Parliamentary Counsel has assured my Department that they are very conscious of the timetable for this Bill and that, as a priority Bill in the Government Legislation Programme, they will make every effort to facilitate its delivery and publication before the end of the current Dáil session. I intend to move the Bill as early as possible after publication, so that, with the cooperation of all sides, we can facilitate its swift passage through the Houses.