The age of criminal responsibility for children is to be raised from seven years to 10 for most offences, under new proposals announced by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.
However, children as young as seven could still be tried for serious offences such as murder, Mr McDowell told the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday.
The Minister was introducing amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill, which will be considered by Government within the next few weeks. The changes include the introduction of controversial anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), tagging of convicted offenders and more stringent penalties for drugs and a variety of other offences.
The 2001 Children Act increased the age of criminal responsibility for children from seven to 12, but this provision has not been implemented. Yesterday, Mr McDowell said the Act was "unduly optimistic" in saying that no child under 12 could commit a crime.
Labour's Joe Costello accused the Minister of "going backwards" on the Children Act. "Who are you going to be dragging into the Central Criminal Court at the age of seven? What sort of nonsense is this?" he asked.
But Mr McDowell warned of "chaos" if he implemented the provision in the Children Act because "if two 11-year-olds throw an eight-year-old off a cliff, they couldn't be punished".
The Minister said he planned to give the courts the power to impose restriction of movement and electronic-monitoring orders instead of imprisonment for some minor offences. However, he warned that the British experience of tagging offenders had shown that the measure was of "doubtful economic value".
Lighting a firework in a public place or attacking a person with a firework will be made offences as will the modification of firearms, for example to create sawn-off shotguns.
Mr McDowell described his proposal for Asbos as "a last and not a first resort". While his proposal was similar to the concept used in the UK "it is there that any similarities end".
Separate provisions would apply to adults and children and "very important safeguards" would be incorporated in the legislation. Only a garda of at least superintendent rank will be able to apply to court for an Asbo, which will last a maximum of two years. The maximum penalty for a breach will be six months.
Children under 14 will be subject to a separate type of order, called a "good-behaviour order".
The Minister plans to make the act of contributing to, or participating in, a criminal organisation an offence, punishable by up to five years in jail.
However he warned that this proposal, which is modelled on Canadian legislation, would not be a "panacea" for dealing with the problem of criminal gangs, whose relationships were "fluid, complex and more a state of mind than a matter of fact". Because of these difficulties, proving an offence would be difficult and the circumstances in which a prosecution could take place would be "comparatively rare".
Committing an offence for the benefit of a criminal organisation would also become an offence, punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Ten-year mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking were introduced in 1999 but, as the Minister pointed out yesterday, sentences of this length have been imposed in only 16 out of 76 cases since then.
While the courts often decided that drugs "mules" merited lesser sentences, tolerant treatment of such people by the courts could encourage traffickers to recruit such people, he warned.
Mr McDowell said he would be proposing that in considering whether to impose a lesser reduced sentence, the court should have regard as to whether this would "compromise" the public's protection against drug traffickers.
In future, evidence on assistance given by drugs offenders to gardaí can be heard in camera and the penalties for drugs importation are being increased to match those for drugs trafficking.
A new offence will be created for the supply of drugs in prisons, and a register of convicted drugs offenders is to be set up.
