Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for coming in here this morning. They are all busy, but this is an important issue. I thank Deputy Stanton, who has led this at committee level. It is important that we hear the experiences on the ground.

I also want to acknowledge the change, I suppose, the cultural change and also the social change and economic change that is happening in society. It is interesting when we hear the difficulties that the retailers are expressing this morning and the drive that Government has to try to bring social change in terms of the additions that we have had in terms of minimum wage, trying to get to a living wage, auto-enrolment, sick pay, etc. We have pushed that through and yet, at the same time, we are not looking at the effect of what is happening in the economic sense to the retailers' business in terms of justice, policing, etc.

The days of Lugs Branigan, unfortunately, are long over. I had a conversation with the governor of Mountjoy some years ago and he told me, if one drove through Dublin city at that time, he could point out 15 families where 50% of the crime was coming from. All of that seems to be changing and we have to change with it. It is quite obvious that the justice system here is a big problem, our policing and our policing response is a problem, and GDPR is also. The idea that business people, such as Mr. O'Driscoll, have to go out and challenge thugs to try to recover his property and put himself and his staff in physical danger is unacceptable. The question here is, how can we move this conversation along to try to generate some kind of response at Government level?

Our guests outlined that there are three problems: the organised gangs element; the opportunistic crime; and the underage. They are all similar but they are not the same. They obviously need a separate kind of response. The organised gangs is conspiracy, and that is a high-level crime. The Garda probably has detective resources to go after that. In the case of the other two, it is not so. The opportunistic crime and the underage crime is a huge problem and if one goes into the family courts, one will see the difficulties of the gardaí trying to progress anything there, particularly with the underage.

Mr. Jennings stated that he wanted to mimic what Belfast retailers had done and that the retailers felt that there was not support from the Garda Representative Association. Mr. Jennings might elaborate. The idea of ASBOs would be my second question to Mr. Jennings. Third, I would ask Mr. Jennings to address this business watch idea that was brought up by Senator Sherlock. Could Mr. Jennings address those three questions for a minute?