The new legislation passed to close the legal loophole following the statutory rape Supreme Court decision meant that people who knew each other and were friends would be in a worse position than strangers, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell warned.
He told the Dáil that "last week I had little time for reflection as the deputies will understand, but something has occurred to me on a growing basis".
The new legislation would have some "strange effects" in individual cases and a "curious by-product" has meant that "a contemporary or school pal would be imputed with more knowledge of a young girl than a 24-year-old man who met her casually", he said.
The Minister was responding during justice questions to Labour's spokesman Brendan Howlin who said that when the Minister introduced the new Bill on statutory rape, he made "great play" about the adversarial court procedure that would result "with young girls being asked about the length of their skirts". Mr Howlin suggested that the potential was always there for such an adversarial court procedure, "given the traumatic nature of cross-examination in such cases".
Mr Howlin asked Mr McDowell for a timeframe for establishing the sort of video recording of evidence that was agreed in 1992 legislation, given the urgency of the situation.
He said a section of the Bill "worsens the situation because it opens the anomaly whereby the girl would have to have had penetrative sex in order to be innocent. One can imagine the sort of cross-examination that will flow from that."
Mr McDowell said he regarded it as a matter of supreme urgency and regretted the delay in bringing forward the necessary video evidence procedures.
He added that he believed that in the case of 15- and 16-year-olds, an accused could claim in the honest belief defence that there was no conversation about the teenager's age and that he believed the child was 17. A jury would be required to acquit the accused if there was no extraneous evidence.
They "would be forced to dig hard and deep before contemplating convicting a person unless there was something egregious or manifestly incredible about that evidence".
As well as the new cross-examination issues "and new vagueness on 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds for one offence and 15- and 16-year-olds for another offence, we must also face the fact that the 15-and 16-year-old category will be more difficult to prosecute in the case of total strangers", Mr McDowell added.
Earlier, he said the Department of Justice and the Office of the Attorney General had never had a closer working relationship than now. He staunchly defended the Attorney General, Rory Brady, following the row about why neither was informed in advance about the Supreme Court case.
Mr Brady was "an extremely hard-working and conscientious man. I know for a fact that if he had been aware of any issue that required my attention, he would have drawn it to my attention."
