There are still substantial barriers to the successful investigation and prosecution of serious crimes which are "not always appreciated by the public", the Director of Public Prosecutions has said.
In the foreword to his first annual report, Mr Eamonn Barnes says his office has "over the years proposed many changes in substantive law, in criminal procedure and in prosecution structures". While "many of these proposals have been adopted or are currently under consideration", there remain "some significant obstacles to the successful investigation and prosecution of serious crime". However, the DPP says it is "for other authorities to determine the extent, if any, to which these difficulties can be ameliorated".
Mr Barnes says to recommend a case for prosecution his office has to "be satisfied that not alone is there a prima facie case but also that it is reasonably reliable or at the very least that there is no substantial reason to believe that it is not reliable".
" . . . speculative or premature prosecutions, prosecutions brought in the hope that something will turn up to justify the charge, above all prosecutions brought to assuage perceived public opinion - all of these would be grossly improper and profoundly unjust and are not permitted", the report says.
The DPP reiterates that he cannot give reasons to the public for his decisions "not to institute or to discontinue criminal prosecutions". He says this restriction "is not merely a policy to which exceptions can be made as thought appropriate". Rather it is a rule which predates the establishment of his office and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
"Officers issuing directions from the Director's Office do however give reasons for their decisions to the Garda Siochana or other reporting agency", the report continues. The interaction between the office and the Garda "very many thousands of times every year" is a "form of very real accountability".
Any failure on the office's part "to do its duty conscientiously and effectively would quickly produce a strong and understandable reaction from the Garda Siochana or such other agencies which would have reverberations in government and other quarters, including the media . . . While not institutionalised in statute law this is arguably the most effective accountability of all".
The Garda, through the Commissioner's office, is entitled to have any decision reviewed. Requests for a review of a decision by "other persons having a personal or legitimate interest in the decision such as a victim or a suspect or accused are sympathetically received", the report says. "If the person seeking the review advances a reasonable basis for the request it would be granted unless that particular factor had already been exhaustively considered", the report adds.
The report stresses that the DPP exercises the function of deciding to prosecute or not to prosecute "only in a very small proportion of the total number of prosecutions initiated annually".
"The vast majority of all criminal prosecutions are prosecuted summarily and are initiated and prosecuted by the Garda Siochana in the District Court without any direct involvement of the Director's Office in the process."
The report also makes a strong call for a database covering the entire criminal justice system operated on common criteria and crime classifications. Without such a database generating statistics from which an overview of crime patterns could be constructed, it is difficult to assess the efficiency of the system, the report says.
