Allowing convicted sex offenders register at any Garda divisional headquarters on their release from prison will facilitate high-risk sex offenders going undetected, the Dáil has been warned.
Independent TD Denis Naughten called for offenders to be obliged to register with their local Garda station because it was local gardaí who would be responsible for monitoring them.
The Roscommon-Galway TD was speaking during the final debate in the Dáil on the Sex Offenders (Amendment) Bill which creates a more robust sex offenders register, prohibits offenders working with children and can make them subject to electronic tagging.
The legislation will also allow An Garda Síochána to release information about sex offenders including pictures, in certain specific circumstances.
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Mr Naughten, who has campaigned for the legislation for the past 13 years, said he was not happy with the final Bill but it was a “significant improvement” on what had been in place previously and would create a register of offenders that gardaí could enforce.
Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said it was a really important piece of legislation and its overall objective was to “support and enhance and improve the management and monitoring of sex offenders in this country, in our community”.
An amendment introduced by Mr Naughten called for offenders to be obliged to register with their local Garda station. He warned that the “overall thrust of much of the legislation puts rights into the hands of the offender rather than the victim or the future potential victims of these individuals”.
He said there could be a situation where someone who was convicted of a very serious offence, was considered to be a high-risk sex offender and resides in a rural townland in Roscommon or Galway, could notify Wexford town.
The Garda in Roscommon or Galway “to make contact with this individual, has to try to track them down and trace them within seven days, have them fingerprinted, have them photographed.
“And the difficulty is that the system does not allow that to happen.”
He added that “we’re supposed to rest assured an email is being sent to Garda stations across the country, that this individual has registered in Wexford town”.
Mr Naughten said “the likelihood is that they have to go through literally hundreds of these updates that come in relation to every single sex offender across the country”.
He said “we are giving too much power to offenders who want to remain underground, who want to remain undetected”.
Ms McEntee rejected the amendment and said the measure had been agreed with the Garda Commissioner. “It’s not to restrict where a person can register themselves. It’s to try to make sure that if a person is moving or if they are outside of their own home place, that they can still register even if they are moving only for a short period of time.”
She added that compliance was high but Mr Naughten said: “There are 70 breaches a year for the last two decades, because the system, as it is structured, puts all the cards in the hands of the sex offender.”
However Mr Naughten’s amendment was rejected by 118 votes to nine.
Later Ms McEntee pledged that she would raise with Google three cases which Mr Naughten raised where the reported convictions were removed under the right to be forgotten.
The Minister had said that “a sexual offence is never going to be allowed to be forgotten”, when Mr Naughten introduced an amendment to prevent Google and other internet engines from removing such court reports.
But when Mr Naughten cited reports of three cases where convictions for possession of child sex abuse material were removed, she promised to raise the issue when meeting Google representatives. Mr Naughten withdrew his amendment on that basis.
