Brian Stanley urges ban on disclosure of counselling notes

Firstly, I want to welcome our guests in the gallery. I know some of you have spoken out publicly about this and sometimes that is not very easy to do. I want to welcome the fact that you are here and hopefully with the support of yourselves and other people that we can get legislation in place. I hope it is this bill. I hope we haven't to wait for 12 months or two years or any longer because this is overdue. I want to thank Deputy Root for bringing this forward. The prohibition of disclosure of counts and records bill is very, very welcome and way overdue. The sheer number of serious cases that are being prosecuted through the courts of rape, of murder. We have had the Satchwell case in recent weeks. Today we have the investigation again taking new steps in relation to the missing person Annie McCarrick, Jojo Dollard and so on. Numerous people down over the years where we've seen people raped, people murdered and we need to start getting the grips with it as a society. And this is, I think as the last Deputy has said, right and wrong. This is about right and the wrong. The trauma, the trauma that those women and it's mainly women go through and then to go through the trial, you know, and victims have told me how difficult that was for them. Going through the trial, the whole adversarial nature of that. And the courtroom is a very adversarial place. I think you're a solicitor, if I'm right. You're not. Some members of the House are. I'm not. But, you know, I've witnessed some court cases and it is a very adversarial place to be and can be very difficult and particularly around sensitive issues like this with abuse or rape. I think that the victims, we've had victims of abuse in institutions, a lot of young men, we've had, you know, the awful violence and rape of women. You know, a lot of that has been within marriages, within partnerships, within what is termed a family home. And, you know, when this first was being discussed, you know, as a lay person, I suppose, in my innocence, I couldn't believe the fact, you know, that when the debate started around this over in recent years about counselling notes, I couldn't believe the fact, Ciancola and Minister, that this, that the counselling notes were actually would be dragged out in court like this and the person humiliated and traumatised. I just think it's shocking. I couldn't, couldn't understand and fathom it. I've been contacted by people, been contacted by women in the run up to this. I've been contacted by a couple of males in relation to this, to support this bill. And, you know, some of them have told me their stories and it's, they're shocking stories. One, one young man, and I call him Damien, it's not his right name, Damien. Damien is a victim, young man, a victim of serious sexual abuse, alleged victim of serious sexual abuse as a child. He has gone for counselling. The counselling has helped him. And in a lot of cases, it helps people prevent them from taking, using self-harm or maybe ending their lives. And now his case and the case involving him and others will come to court over the next year or two. And the thoughts of these notes being read out in court, it's shocking. It's absolutely terrible. You cannot have counselling without confidentiality. You can't have it. That is the only way it can happen. You're re-traumatising the victims by the disclosure of the counselling notes during the trial process. The counselling has to be a safe space. And that's what it should provide. And once you disclose the notes, it's compromised. People will either not go through it or they will, they won't tell everything. That's the facts. I certainly wouldn't. If I was a victim, I wouldn't go near it. If I thought the counselling notes were going to be used in court. It's absolutely shocking. The disclosure of the counselling notes or the records completely undermines the whole basis of it and can only be used to browbeat the victims in court. That's where I see this being used by the defence to do that. So the importance of this cannot be overstated and the importance of the privacy of counselling for recovery and even for safe life saving. You know, it will, anything else will deter the victims. And I just want to mention as well, the situation regarding the Attorney General, you said in your opening statement, Minister, that the Office Attorney General points out that the constitutional right to a trial in dual course of law entails the duty upon the prosecution that authorises to ensure the appropriate disclosures take place. This isn't an appropriate disclosure. I'd like to see that tested in court. I don't think any sane person could argue. I'd like to see somebody putting forward the argument that this is an appropriate disclosure. What's appropriate about disclosing counselling notes? You know, this is the victim's notes. The trial is about the perpetrator being on trial, not about the victim being on trial. You know, so I would like to see that tested in the court of law. Could I just say as well that the previous minister, Minister McEntee, as I recall it, promised to right this wrong. And that hasn't happened. Now, a lot of progress has been made. You know, we've had legislation passed to give protection to victims. And as I said, there's predominantly women. And some progress has been made. Coco's law, for example. You know, that's there now with serious penalties. And rightly so for anybody who would think of sharing what could be classed intimate images. And mainly men do it. But you could have women doing it as well. But seriously, that law is really, really important. And I welcome the fact that we now have that in place. As I said, the previous minister said we do it. It's in the programme for government. You were saying now we wanted to delay this bill for a year. What's wrong with letting it go to committee where it can be amended? What's wrong with doing that? And trust the House here to fix it, along with the parliamentary legal team, the officers of parliamentary legal advisers. What's to stop us from doing that? This is an excuse to back this back. You know, and the government needs to be more open. You often say across to us, where's your solutions? Here's a solution being put forward to right or wrong, as has been said earlier. You know, you should be more open. We need to more, you know, we need to get away from this thing because it's not a government bill, we're not going to support it. You know, and sometimes you bring forward stuff as well, that is positive. And the opposition do support it. But government needs to be more. It needs to work both ways. And I hope that we can have a speedy passage of legislation, you know, to deal with this. I just want to mention one other matter briefly around gender-based violence and domestic violence. You mentioned in your statement as well, Minister, that one of our key priorities is guaranteeing safe refuge and accommodation in every region in the country. And you talked about zero tolerance. I agree with you. I don't think anybody here doesn't agree with you. I live in a county where there's no refuge. There is no refuge. I'm talking about this in here. You know, I hadn't as many grey hairs in my head when I started talking about this here. Right? I don't know how many. You've lost count of the ministers that have raised the weight. We need refuges in the nine counties that don't have them. You know, for people who are victims of domestic violence and their children-in-law cases to be shipped off, in our case, 60 or 70 or 80 miles away to Longford or Limerick or somewhere else from County Leash is scandalous. They're away from their family. The kids are away from the school. They're away from the GP. They're away from their family support. You know, we can't continue doing this. We have to be able to do things quicker. The amount of jigs and reels that we have to go through to get anything moving, it's like moving a glacier. You know, it's the one thing that's frustrating in this country. I realise we have to do things right. I'm not talking about doing things in a slap-dash manner, but holy God tonight, the amount of time it takes to move stuff. It's like rolling a huge stone up to the top of a hill. And every time you're just at the top of it, it rolls back another 10. It pushes you back down halfway back down again and you start all over again. Those centres need to be in place. And please bring that back to government. The Cabinet needs to fast-track this. I've spoken to the County Council about it. Councillor Caroline Dewan Stanley is consistently raising it at County Council level. We need to get it moving. In the case of Leash, there's a site selected. There's a site selected. As far as I know, the money's approved. We need to get it moving. You know, heads need to be knocked together. We cannot have these victims of abuse being shipped off with their young kids in law cases, you know, 60, 70, 80 miles away, you know, away from everything. It makes life worse for them. It's also what it's doing is stopping people from leaving these abusive situations, the fact that they don't have anywhere to go. And sometimes people go back to that situation. You know, I saw that happening with somebody in my extended family, a second cousin a number of years ago. They kept going back. And we couldn't understand why. I can understand why now, because that was the 1970s. There wasn't anywhere for them to go. You know, now, you know, here we are now, and it's now 2025, and we still don't have it. So we need to fix that as well. So look, for God's sake, let's this bill go through. And let's amend it in committee stage. And let's go home and get the legislations in place and give this priority. The Prime Minister's note was passed here one night. We stayed here, as I recall, at five o'clock in the morning, to bail out the banks, right? And bailing out the banks, depends where you are, might have been important or not important. But this is more important to to sort out people's lives and to help them. Thanks for that. The Prime Minister to conclude.