LEGISLATION GOVERNING victim impact statements is needed because "some judges take one view and others take a different view" of the practice, the Director of Public Prosecutions said at the weekend.
Expressing concern about the prospect of victims going to jail if they "overstepped the mark", James Hamilton told RTÉ's Marian Finucane Show that a better solution might be for the court to restrain the publication of any "out of order" comments in victim impact statements.
In the interview, which was broadcast on Radio One on Saturday, Mr Hamilton said: "I think it obviously could be very distressing for families to find that they were expecting to be able to do something and they're not, and obviously when you have a situation like that where some judges take one view and others take a different view, then the only way to deal with it seems to be legislation."
There was "no doubt" that victims feel it is "cathartic" to be able "to confront the person who's wronged their loved one, and in a way perhaps it's part of the punishment of the person who has killed somebody, to have to listen to that," he added.
"The argument against it, I suppose, is that you have a mandatory sentence for murder, and therefore you can't take it into account, in a sense," he said.
"I don't think that the solution that the Court of Criminal Appeal came up with in the Holohan case is a very good one. Because what they said there was that if somebody departed from the statement it could be a contempt of court. Now I think most of us would be very disturbed at the idea that victims of crime would end up being sent to prison because they overstepped the mark."
The idea of restraining publication of such remarks "would be a better way to deal with that problem", he said.
Separately, Mr Hamilton said he would not have taken the same view as that of the Supreme Court when it ruled that it should be a defence that a person had a genuine belief as to a girls' age. As a "general rule" he believed that the blame should lie with an older man who has sex with an underage girl, despite being told she was above the age of consent.
He added that there is a need for a referendum on the subject, and noted that this had been recommended to the Government by an Oireachtas committee.