Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said that she cannot interfere in cases where judges allow rapists to serve sentences concurrently.
In an interview with The Irish Mirror as part of our 'Stop the Violence' campaign, Ms McEntee said that separation of powers means that the courts system is independent of the Government.
Several survivors of rape or sexual abuse have raised issues about the fact that if their assaulter is convicted of more than one crime or is already in prison, they may not serve time for their second crime.
Limerick woman Leona O’Callaghan previously described this as receiving a "free rape". She was raped as a child by Patrick O’Dea (52), from Pike Avenue, Limerick.
When he was sentenced he was already serving a 15-year prison term over a different rape and was given a concurrent sentence.
Ms O’Callaghan told a conference in 2019: "To me, it felt like a message that either my or the other girl’s rape didn’t really matter. Our legal system says he gets a free one. I never did find out which one of us was the free rape."
Asked about this case, Ms McEntee said that while not all sentences have to run concurrently, it is not in her power to dictate to judges about how sentences are handed down.
She explained: "Unfortunately, it's not something that I can intervene in. With the separation of powers, it is for a judge to decide.
"While I would love to, in those kinds of instances, make my own opinion known and to direct in whatever way from a Minister for Justice point of view, I'm not allowed to.
"You do have certain cases where you do have consecutive sentences.
"What I can do and what I am doing is making sure that there's a greater focus on education within the judiciary when it comes to rape, sexual assault, domestic violence cases...
"We have what's called Supporting a Victims’ Journey. That's all about how we can support victims through the judicial process.
"We have a plan around training judges, that's already started.
"We have people who have come forward and volunteered to actually take up training in this space so they have better knowledge of how to deal with victims, of how to respond to these types of cases.
"Next year and beyond, [the plan is] looking at potentially having specialised domestic and sexual violence judges."
"Like family courts, where we're going to have specialist judges in family courts, that we would have specialised judges dealing with those types of cases.
"For me, that's so important because if you have a judge that is understanding of what victims go through, how you can re-traumatise victims through the process but also what is appropriate in terms of the crime and the sentence matching each other.
"So often what we see and what people feel is that the sentence simply doesn't match the crime that's happened."
