Dr Ian Marder

The general scheme of the Judicial Council (Amendment) Bill 2026 proposes to give the minister for justice, home affairs and migration the power to direct the Judicial Council to prepare sentencing guidelines in respect of certain offences.

There has been little comment on this aspect of the legislation, which is principally concerned with reforms to the process for setting personal injury guidelines.

However, Dr Ian Marder, an associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University, told Irish Legal News that it “runs the risk of politicising the work of the committee, where political or media outrage, rather than evidence of need, informs the decision to direct the production of guidelines on a specific offence”.

The general scheme also provides that the minister can set out the timeframes for the preparation of sentencing guidelines.

“This is likely to have a negative effect on the quality of its work, given that the committee has few dedicated human resources to support it,” Dr Marder said.

“The Scottish Sentencing Council, in contrast, has a senior team of five full-time staff and a range of other staff and committees.”

He added: “The committee is also hindered by a lack of data. To draw up an offence-specific guideline which improves sentencing consistency, the committee needs to quantify current sentencing practice and measure the extent of any inconsistency.

“Otherwise, the committee cannot know the extent to which a guideline reflects current sentencing levels, nor will it be able to undertake its statutory responsibility to monitor the impact of any guidelines it produces.”

Dr Marder and his colleague Dr Eoin Guilfoyle have called for a “sentencing census” to track the sentences for different offences and the extent to which aggravating and mitigating circumstances are taken into account.

This would be the “first step” towards more consistent sentencing, he said.

“In the meantime, the committee can add value to sentencing by creating a general guideline on the principles and purposes of sentencing, and another on the sentencing process,” Dr Marder said.

“Again, this would reflect the patient, logical order in which the Scottish Sentencing Council has done its work.”