Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to be here to support strongly the Proceeds of Crime (Amendment) Bill 2014. It is typical of Deputy Maloney. In his time in this House he has brought forward a number of thoughtful and necessary pieces of legislation over a range of fields and none is more valuable than the proposed amendment of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996, whereby section 4 will be amended by substituting "2 years" for "7 years" to significantly bring down the period of time within which the illegally acquired assets of criminals will be able to be taken back by the communities from which they were stolen in the first place.

This is another important piece of legislation and it reminds us of the rise of drug-fuelled crime in the period from the 1980s to the mid-1990s which led to the terrible assassination of Veronica Guerin and the virtual collapse of law and order in many areas of our cities. This Bill brings us back to that era and the helplessness that many communities felt. I was one of the people who did not regard "Love/Hate" as a valuable contribution to drama because, like many of the citizens in this city, I lived through the situations depicted in that drama. It is very painful for communities to see, even in a dramatic form, the visualisation of the kind of suffering of those times when, in a period of five or six months, five or six people would be assassinated and where the iron grip of major drug gangsters was able to intimidate communities.

In the early 1990s, the party to which I belonged was involved in Government and we took a valuable step in establishing the Criminal Assets Bureau and giving it powers, which have been sustained by the Supreme Court, to ensure that the viciously ill-gotten gains that destroyed communities in this and other cities would be brought back to the community. From its establishment in late 1996 to the end of 2011, the Criminal Assets Bureau successfully froze some €70 million worth of assets. It has 70 staff from the Garda Síochána, the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection, backed up by the Chief State Solicitor. It has done a very good job over the years and the money returned to the Exchequer, even in the period of the last Government under the 2005 Act, has been very valuable. In 2008, for example, over €6 million alone was returned and €1.5 million was returned in 2009. The figure for 2010 was €3.1 million and it was €2.7 million in 2011.

In economics, we sometimes debate the hypothecation of taxes. In the recent UK general election there was a major discussion of the value of specifically hypothecating taxes for particular purposes. Most of us would agree that the proceeds of ill-gotten gains from major crime should be returned to communities. In that context, one of the most appalling things about this Government's record has been the way drug task forces have had their expenditure slashed by 70%.

See this speech in context