FINE GAEL will present new legislation in the Dáil later this year to give victims or their families the automatic right to give a victim impact statement in court.
The party's spokesman on justice, Charlie Flanagan, was speaking after Siobhán Kearney's family were refused permission to read their prepared statement to the court following the conviction of her husband, Brian Kearney, for her murder on Wednesday.
"The trial of Brian Kearney for the murder of his wife Siobhán was in most respects an excellent example of justice being served, and was conducted efficiently and transparently," he said.
"However, regrettably this case also serves as an example of how victims and their families are often overlooked by the criminal justice system.
"Siobhán Kearney's family was denied the opportunity to read their victim impact statement to the court. The law as it stands does not provide for victim impact statements in murder trials."
He said that Fine Gael would bring the Victims' Rights Bill to the Dáil, giving victims or their families an automatic right to give a victim impact statement to the court, later this year.
The Bill was published earlier this year and will be debated during Fine Gael's Private Members' Time in the Dáil.Fine Gael will also be holding a conference on victims' rights in April, he said.
The place of victims in the criminal justice system, including the role of victim impact statements, will be considered by the Law Reform Commission in its current programme of law reform, announced in December.
Advic, the organisation which campaigns for the rights of the families of victims of homicide, has also called for judges to be obliged to allow victim impact statements in murder trials.
Advic spokeswoman Joan Deane said that some families may not wish to do it, but those families that wish to give a victim impact statement should be allowed to as a right.
Leading barrister Paul Anthony McDermott also said that this should be considered by the law, especially in murder cases where the victim is the one person who can never talk.
"All of the witnesses can say what they like about the victim and obviously the accused and any defence witnesses if they give evidence will have an incentive to try to, in some cases, destroy the reputation of the accused. You see this in provocation cases where somebody has been killed, the accused is saying, 'I killed them because they provoked me'," he said.
However, he also warned of the danger of people saying inappropriate things under legal privilege.