The Government will tomorrow consider changing the law to make it an offence for women to have sex with underage boys, in order to bring gender equality to the law concerning sex with minors.
The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, will outline to the Cabinet his favoured legislative response to last week's Supreme Court judgment which ruled that part of the law concerning statutory rape was unconstitutional.
This will include creating a single age of consent of 16 for both boys and girls - currently that for girls is 17 and for boys 15. The age of consent for males to get involved in homosexual activity would also be set at 16 rather than the current 17.
According to Government sources, Mr McDowell will produce heads of a Bill at tomorrow's Cabinet meeting, but it will be open to the Government to consider options other than those suggested by the Minister.
Last week Mr McDowell pointed to the anomaly whereby it is an offence for males to have sex with girls under the age of consent, but there is not an equivalent offence for females who have sex with underage boys.
His proposals to Cabinet are expected to include a plan to change this.
As well as proposing a new standard age of consent of 16, the Minister's proposals are expected to suggest that a person who has sex with someone between the ages of 14 and 16 is not automatically committing an offence if he or she is less than two years older than the underage person.
A defendant could not make a defence claiming that there was consent if the person with whom they had sex was under 14.
Fine Gael's front bench will tomorrow discuss a draft Bill produced by its justice spokesman, Jim O'Keeffe, to deal with the legal difficulty that has followed the Supreme Court ruling.
The court ruled that a section of the 1935 Criminal Law Amendment Act providing for a maximum life sentence for anyone having sex with a girl under 15 was unconstitutional, because it did not allow a defence based on a genuine error having been made in regard to the girl's age.
According to Fine Gael, they produced the Bill "in the face of apparent apathy and a stated lack of concern on the part of the Minister for Justice who, on RTÉ radio, said that there was 'no gaping hole'" in the law.
While Fine Gael says its Bill is broadly based on a 1990 report of the Law Reform Commission, Government sources said yesterday that it contained "a number of major flaws".
The sources said the Fine Gael Bill would make it a criminal offence punishable with three years in jail for two 16-year-olds who are boyfriend and girlfriend to have consensual sexual intercourse.
They also said the age limits and sentences provided for in the Bill were inconsistent with each other.
However, Fine Gael said yesterday that its Bill made it no more serious an offence for two 16-year-olds to have sexual intercourse than it was before last week's Supreme Court judgment.
"The key issue here is to restore protection to vulnerable young people as a matter of urgency.
"Other issues, for example age of consent, can be dealt with in the longer term with a full debate," according to Fine Gael.
The ruling has already led to a number of legal challenges and withdrawals of court cases.