Opposition parties have called for the reform of sentencing procedures for repeat serious offenders after it emerged that a man convicted of murder yesterday had convictions for manslaughter, armed robbery and assaults on women.
Fine Gael said sentences should be very heavily weighted if an offender has previously been convicted of a serious crime. Labour expressed concern about how crimimals who repeatedly re-offended are sentenced.
Michael Murphy (42), of Rathmullen Park, Drogheda, Co Louth, was sentenced to life at the Central Criminal Court for the 2001 murder of 28-year-old German woman Ms Bettina Poeschel. Ms Poeschel disappeared on September 25th, 2001, the day before she was due to return home to Munich.
She was on a six-day trip to Ireland to visit an old school friend and had decided to visit the interpretative centre at Newgrange on her last day here. She was last seen alive walking alone along the Donore Road towards Newgrange shortly after 11.30 a.m. that morning. Murphy was working on the motorway construction site at Donore on the same day.
Speaking outside the Four Courts after the verdict, Ms Poeschel's father, Jorgen, accompanied by her younger sister Cornelia, said they were "relieved with the verdict".
"It made a closure of a badchapter for my family," he said.
Murphy was convicted in 1983 of manslaughter after he strangled Mrs Catherine Carroll (64). He served nine years of a 12-year sentence for that crime. In 1997, he served six months in prison after he attacked two young women on their way home from a Drogheda disco. He grabbed both by the neck and tried to pull them to the ground.
Fine Gael's spokesman on justice, Mr John Deasy TD, said repeat offenders like Murphy were not being adequately punished. "When you have a person who has been identified as having a persistent criminal past involving serious offences what do you think is going to happen if he is released?" he said.
The issue of sentencing needed to be "completely overhauled", he said. More mandatory sentencing was needed, Mr Deasy added.
Labour's spokesman on justice, Mr Joe Costello TD, said cases like this "where a repeat offender is freed again and again" were of particular concern.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has directed that the Parole Board be given access to books of evidence when considering parole for offenders, with a view to refusing parole for those who commit murder. A spokesman for Mr McDowell said last night: "The Minister has repeatedly stated his preference that those who take life should spend 'a very, very long time in jail'." The spokesman said the Parole Board would not even consider parole before an offender served 10 years and in cases of very serious violent crimes, offenders could expect to spend up to 20 years in jail.