Range of victim impact statements to be extended

MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern yesterday expanded the range of offences in relation to which victims and their families have a right to give impact statements.

Crimes which come under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 are to be included, as part of an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Bill 2009 agreed at a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice.

The original Bill included violent crimes and sexual violence or threat of such offences. Mr Ahern said the Act “does contain a small number of offences which are not violent but emotional such as the abduction of children”.

The change came about as a result of a Seanad hearing on the Bill, he said. Among the crimes included in the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 are coercion, harassment, demands for payment of debt causing alarm, endangerment, endangering traffic, false imprisonment, and abduction of a child by a parent or by other persons. Mr Ahern said he would publish the new Victims’ Charter next week.