THE GOVERNMENT is campaigning with Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands against a draft EU directive which would create a common European system governing the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings.
European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding – who holds the justice and fundamental rights portfolio – ran into resistance when she raised the proposal yesterday at a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers.
Saying her plan contained serious flaws and would create “all sorts of problems” for police, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said the draft directive went further than anything in the European Convention on Human Rights or case law under it.
He has co-signed a letter with his British, French, Belgian and Dutch counterparts in which they call on her to take account of their concerns about the initiative.
Mr Shatter said: “Ireland is enthusiastic about the principle of the directive” but he argued that the proposal in its current form would hamper criminal investigations.
“Rather than providing balance it would substantially inhibit what I would describe as basic detective work.”
Mr Shatter said Ireland had exercised its right to opt out of the legislation but was participating in the debate with a view to improving the proposal.
However, that was not the end of the matter as it seemed to him that the proposal was now set to be improved radically. “At the end of the day, if a redrafting of it produces an appropriate directive we can of course opt back in again anyway,” he told reporters.
The Minister took issue with several elements of the proposal. “Firstly, its scope creates a difficulty in that it seems to apply to the very early stages of an investigation,” he said.
“In circumstances where the gardaí would be at a very early stage of investigation the directive would seem to require that before you could ask questions of any suspected offender they would first of all have to have access to a lawyer.
“Before you could examine any piece of evidence as opposed to ask questions, again the person who is in charge of the piece of evidence or on whose person is the piece of evidence would have to have access to a lawyer.”
The Minister said this meant that a man suspected of robbing an elderly woman’s handbag could not be questioned by a Garda without having access to a lawyer.
“Secondly, the guard couldn’t even take or remove the handbag from that individual because it would be a piece of evidence without that individual having access to a lawyer.”
Ms Reding has been defending the proposal. After the meeting broke up yesterday, her spokesman circulated statements in which the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe and the European Criminal Bar Association supported the current draft.
