The majority of convicted sex offenders will have to sign on a register when new legislation announced yesterday comes into force. They will also have to inform gardai if they change address.
The new sex offence legislation announced by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, also provides for limited legal representation for rape victims.
Mr O'Donoghue said the Cabinet approved the setting up of a register of sex offenders, inclusion on which would be a mandatory part of a sentence for certain sex offences. The Government also plans to have offenders released from prison on community supervision, although this would not involve electronic tagging of sex offenders.
Anyone who failed to register or did not notify gardai of a change of address would be charged with an offence, which would carry a prison sentence.
"The length of time on the register will be set out in the Bill, possibly by reference to the seriousness of the offence, with some modification for juvenile offenders," Mr O'Donoghue told a graduating class at the Garda College in Templemore. "And if it is feasible to extend the notification requirements to any sex offenders coming into this jurisdiction from abroad, then that too will be done."
Under the new law, gardai would be given powers to seek barring orders against known sex offenders, preventing them from entering areas where there is "cause for concern". Such a barring order would be sought under civil law, making the burden of proof lighter than in criminal proceedings - based on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
The new law would also make it an offence for a convicted sex offender to look for or accept a job involving unsupervised access to children. However, Mr O'Donoghue said there may be "particular legal difficulties" involved in this measure. Mr O'Donoghue said the Sex Offences Bill should be published by the summer and he hoped the register would be established by the end of the year.
The Bill would also provide for legal representation for rape victims or victims of sexual assault, but only during an application to cross-examine a victim about their own sexual history. "Since such applications are made in the absence of the jury, the argument that separate legal representation would unfairly sway a jury does not arise."
Mr O'Donoghue said there were already procedures for police in Britain to notify the movements of a known sex offender to the gardai. Britain had operated its own register of sex offenders for more than a year. However, the inclusion of such people on an Irish register would involve "complex legal and constitutional issues because the individual would not have been convicted by an Irish court," he said.
The register would not be retrospective, applying only to those convicted after its introduction. But anyone who had a civil barring order imposed by the courts would automatically be registered, Mr O'Donoghue said.
There are more than 270 sex offenders in Irish prisons, the largest proportion in the Curragh Prison, where there is no treatment programme. Plans for a community-based treatment programme to be run by the Probation and Welfare Service have yet to receive funding. An interim report into the service last year recommended the immediate recruitment of 75 probation and welfare officers.
Mr O'Donoghue said the community supervision orders which could be imposed by the courts as part of a sentence would necessitate "an expansion of the Probation and Welfare Service". In the case of an individual sentenced to life and released from prison, the individual could be under the supervision of the probation and welfare service "for the rest of his life."
Asked if he was concerned a register could lead to vigilante attacks on known sex offenders, Mr O'Donoghue said he did not anticipate such a problem. The register would be maintained on a database to be part of the planned upgrading of the Garda computer system.
