Fifteen years ago, in response to pressure from public opinion, the then coalition government passed legislation to provide for the electronic recording of special categories of interviews conducted with persons in Garda custody. It appeared that admissions of guilt had been improperly obtained in certain high-profile cases. But nothing happened. A lack of political will; the cost of the exercise; resistance within the Garda Siochana and official reluctance, all conspired to ensure that the protection of an individual's civil rights was relegated to a wish list.
Since then, the pace of reform has been snail-like. Five years passed before a number of public miscarriages of justice caused the then Minister for Justice, Mr Ray Burke, to commission a report on the matter from a committee headed by Judge Frank Martin. Again, the response was clear-cut: "as a safeguard towards ensuring that admissions of guilt made to the Garda Siochana are properly obtained, the questioning of suspects should take place before an audio-visual device." Such a system should, the committee urged, be implemented "with all convenient speed". It took two years for the government to agree to the introduction of a pilot scheme in four Garda districts, with the support of Garda representative bodies. A further seven years passed before an evaluation of that scheme by a committee headed by Mr Justice Esmond Smyth again found in favour of electronic recording. And it has finally fallen to the present Coalition Government to make the money and the resources available to get the job done.
Mr John O'Donoghue made a virtue of necessity yesterday when he announced Government approval for mandatory audio/visual recordings for certain serious offences as "a real and substantial guarantee to both detainees and Garda interviewers alike that any statements in connection with the investigation of a criminal offence are made and taken correctly and in accordance with law." But because of the need to refurbish and sound-proof interview rooms in 200 of the State's 700 Garda stations and to provide training for members of the Garda in their statutory and non-statutory obligations, the system will be phased in over the next 12-18 months at a cost of £10m. After that, the running costs will amount to about £1m a year. The Minister for Justice said the initiative reflected the Government's commitment to "ensuring that the public enjoys full confidence in the investigation of crime and the criminal justice system as a whole."
The decision to implement the reform must be welcomed even if it is long overdue. But the expenditure of money in this area should not divert the Government from giving early effect to this week's report on the Probation and Welfare Service. Extra funding will be required to establish "bail/probation hostels" within the grounds of open prisons and rehabilitation programmes for jailed sex and drug offenders must be expanded in all the State's prisons as a matter of urgency. Legislation designed to reduce the size of the prison population should be introduced as a matter of urgency. The thrust of the report may differ from what Fianna Fail campaigned for three years ago in opposition, but the rapidly falling incidence in minor crime - as the number of persons unemployed hits a 16-year-low - should be sufficient justification for a change in policy. In these new circumstances, giving judges the power to direct offenders to receive counselling, to make reparation to their victims or to get treatment, rather than risk turning young people into jail recidivists, makes very good sense.