Cowen does not agree with court decision

Minister's reactionMinister for Finance Brian Cowen has said he disagrees with the Supreme Court decision that found part of the law on sexual offences against young girls unconstitutional, but he recognised that the court was the final arbiter of constitutional matters.

"I am simply making the point that it was unfortunate what happened because we now have to bring in amending legislation which provides that line of defence to such defendants," he said.

Speaking on RTÉ's News At One programme yesterday, he said that as a parent himself he wanted to see the strongest possible protection for children. "I want to assure people of this, we will vigorously seek to . . . argue on behalf of the State that there is jurisprudence on both sides of this argument."

He said that following the original High Court judgment, which rejected the challenge to the legislation, "there was hope that the position would be upheld in the Supreme Court".

He said that the Government had not been in a position to bring forward a proactive step to deal with the issue before the Supreme Court made its decision in relation to the statutory rape case and was not prepared to weaken what had been a strong law in advance of the Supreme Court decision, by legislating in advance to allow a defence of mistake as to age.

"The 1935 Act has served us well, served successive prosecutors over seven decades in respect of prosecuting people who commit the crime of statutory rape," he said. "What the Supreme Court has done has indicated that a line of defence should be available to a defendant that they could have an honest belief on reasonable grounds that the person was in fact more than the age set out in the offence itself."

He defended Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and said he did not agree that he should have known every detail of the case. "I have confidence in the Minister for Justice and the Attorney General. I have full confidence in them," he said.

"The people who were employed by the Attorney General's office and the DPP's office, those people were in the court dealing with the case, putting the same arguments that had been successfully advocated in the High Court, putting them to the Supreme Court. The balance of probability, I would suggest, was very much in the hope that that position would be upheld."