Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on 8 June 2026.

MLA

Ms Emma Sheerin

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

8 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5600831

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Minister for her intervention. That will be key and integral to the success of the legislation. If the police have new powers to deal with criminal gangs, organised groups, paramilitaries or whatever you want to call them, we have to ensure that there is a twin-track approach and that all issues are dealt with holistically. As well as having increased powers to punish those who are directing crime, we should have support systems in place and acknowledge the socio-economic factors that lead people from deprived areas to become victims of gangs in the first place. We heard from the Independent Reporting Commission that paramilitarism cannot be tackled through criminal justice measures alone. However, we are content that the amendments are being included for the right reasons and that the outcome should be positive. We support the amendments on that basis. I will touch very briefly on some of the other issues in this group. Ciara Ferguson will go into more detail on amendment No 70, which is about repealing the historic legislation that criminalised vagrancy. We have already had contributions from across the Chamber on the fact that the language that was used in that law, which predated partition, was antiquated, grossly offensive and completely lacking in empathy or compassion. We want to change that. During the Committee Stage, we had conversations about whether or not there was a need for replacement legislation, and we are quite reluctant in our support of that because we are not quite sure of the perceived gaps. However, we are happy to support those amendments today and watch how that plays out. I also want to touch on amendment No 73, which abolishes the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. Of course, Sinn Féin supports that amendment. There is absolutely no place for criminalisation of blasphemy in a modern, pluralist society. As someone who exclaims "Ó a Dhia"

a couple of hundred times a day, I am definitely on board with that. We will support amendment No 73. I also want to briefly mention Mr Frew's amendments on domestic abuse involving animals, namely amendment Nos 88 and 89. My colleague Aoife Finnegan will touch on those in more detail. Initially, we were concerned about those amendments and worried that they would perhaps water down the grievous nature of domestic violence and have the unintended consequence of minimising victims' pain and suffering. However, after having spoken with Sonya McMullan from Women's Aid and having listened to the research, it became very clear that not only are animals being used as a means to torture victims, they are also suffering in those scenarios themselves. It has a very progressive and powerful message to send in that it completely dispels any notion or myth, which we sometimes have as a by-product of the pro-contact model, that an abuser will abuse a victim because of something that the victim has done or because the victim is somehow complicit in their own suffering and somehow to blame. This exposes the fact that an abuser will abuse whoever they can get away with abusing, so an innocent animal will be a victim as well.

527 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:55 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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