Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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389. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality To ask the Minister for Justice further to Parliamentary Question No. 375 of 4 July 2024, when a detailed reply will issue to the question as promised; the reason for the delay; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40419/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I contacted An Garda Síochána and the Court Service to request the information required to answer the Deputy's question and, as it was not available in the time permitted, I undertook to respond when the information was received.

The following table has been provided by the Garda authorities and outlines the number of summons and charges which have been linked to Part 4 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 since its commencement by year. The figures below are accurate as of date of extraction (24.07.24) and are subject to change.

*Count of proceedings by year, under part 4 of Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017

*Count of charges after 27^th March 2017, the date in which Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 came into effect.

** As per Garda Síochána Analysis Service ( GSAS) policy, figures less than 10 are not released externally to comply with data protection requirements.

The Courts Service have provided the following statistics on the number of persons and number of court orders made for identified offences under Criminal Law (Sexual Offences Act) for the years 2022 and 2023.

Jan – Dec 2022

Jan – Dec 2023

The Courts Service have provided the following notes in relation to the information provided.

Note 1: A person may be before the courts for more than one offence or may have received more than one order so will be displayed on the report more than once.

Note 2: Please note that for the offence Section 7A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 as inserted by Section 25 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, the offence code was only activated on the Pulse system by AGS in October 2021 so if there were prosecutions for this offence prior to October 2021 they would have been uncoded free text codes. Courts can only provide data in relation to where offence codes provided on the system were used by prosecutors. Prosecutors may have used uncoded free text offences and any such offences would not be included in the data provided.

Note 3: Many of those offences have been sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court. At this time, the system in use by the Courts Service in the Circuit Courts ("ICMS") is a lotus notes database and cannot produce reports for specific offences. The only reports which are available are by offence category rather than for individual offences and categories of offences can contain multiple offences.

As the Deputy will be aware, a key purpose for the 2017 Sexual Offences Act was to provide additional protection to persons involved in prostitution, especially vulnerable persons and victims of human trafficking.

It allows those engaged in prostitution to provide information to Gardaí, for instance if they were subjected to violence by clients, without fear of prosecution for selling sexual services.

My Department commissioned an independent consultant to undertake the statutory review of Part 4 of the Act but, due to a number of reasons, it was not possible for the review to be completed within the desired timeframe.

Expressions of interest for a new Study lead to complete the Part 4 review of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 2017 were sought and following the closing date for receipt of applications, all options for concluding this work were considered.

A very small number of expressions of interest were received, none of which met the necessary requirements to complete the review.

Arising from those considerations and in view of the research already undertaken and the work done compiling and analysing the submissions received, all of which have been made available to my Department, I decided that the most appropriate way to complete the review is for the Research and Evaluation Unit in my Department to draft the report using the material provided.

As an action under the Justice Plan 2024, I receive regular updates in relation to progress on this review. I understand that the report is now very close to being finalised and I expect to receive it very soon.