David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment my colleagues on tabling this very important motion. I have just come from a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade and a series of other briefings. We are very busy in the Seanad today, but there are a number of issues I wish to raise. I am very glad that the motion has not been amended, that it has been accepted and that there will not be a vote on it. It appears to be going through unanimously, which is very important. In these extraordinarily difficult financial times we need to support genuine charitable efforts. There are some remarkable individuals and organisations such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which is splendid. I want to come back to it because it is very vulnerable. People like Alice Leahy in Trust which looks after the homeless need and deserve our support.

This is an unregulated area, particularly with reference to charity mugging or "chugging", as I think it is called. I live on North Great Georges Street and come here via O'Connell Street and Grafton Street. I sometimes see up to eight charities with 20 young people collecting. Sometimes it is an exercise to be undertaken in transition year, but I do not think this is appropriate. The sector should be regulated properly, although I do not begrudge charities the money. There are other people who pay young people, very often foreign students, to collect money for them. I wonder how this activitiy should be regulated, but it should be regulated.

I particularly commend the work of Senator Mary Ann O'Brien and her husband who is in the Visitors Gallery who are the co-founders of the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation. Based on their tragic personal experience, they have built something that is extraordinarily important for parents placed in this difficult situation where they did not receive any State assistance. It is a reproach to what is supposed to be the caring element of our society that this very vulnerable group with damaged children - I hope it is not inappropriate to say this - did not receive support. The State stands reproached in that regard.

I mentioned the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. I am not a Roman Catholic, but it is not a sectarian group. It provides wonderful briefings. For example, some years ago it spoke about trying to front-load grants for fuel. Paying them on a staged basis was absolutely useless because one could not buy 16s.4½d. worth of fuel. One needs the entire lump sum to provide for oneself for the winter. It costs the Exchequer no more money, but it allows people to access fuel. That is the kind of practical measure the Society of St. Vincent de Paul takes. It provides clothing for people.

I am homing in on my last point, the main one I wish to make. I reported to the Garda some time ago on people who consistently dropped in little notices in my area asking for old clothes for a charity and giving a telephone number one could ring. I rang the number repeatedly, but nobody replied. It was a scam. The people concerned were taking clothes, while pretending to be charities and depriving those who might have benefited from them if they had been given to real charities.

That is only the thin end of the wedge. The real situation was exposed recently in an excellent programme on RTE. It was one I had been aware of for some time. The makers of the programme traced people who were violently breaking into the collection bins for the St. Vincent de Paul and so on and stealing the clothes. This is a multi-million euro industry. There was a St. Vincent de Paul warehouse in Cork with racks and racks of hangers, all empty. We saw video footage of these people forcibly bursting the doors open and piling the clothes into vans. That is the situation. There is no law in this country under which these people can be prosecuted. One question I would like the Minister of State to bring back to the Government is this: Can we please have some law? These are violent criminal gangs, many of them eastern European. I am not racist about this. Eastern Europe is a very large place but it produces some of these crooks. It is appalling that people in this day and age, who are really on the edge, should be deprived of clothing, of monetary assistance and so on because criminal gangs are making millions. Enormous trailers are being loaded up and exiting through Dublin Port bound for central Europe. That is wrong. Will the Minister of State please bring this issue back to the Government and ask for some legislation? We need to consult with the St. Vincent de Paul and the other charities to find out what legislation is needed and put it in place. Just this morning I heard in the news on the wireless that there was a battle between some of these groups and I am not sure that a man was not killed. In fact, he was killed. This is shocking. These criminals are leeching like vampires off the goodwill and good intentions of Irish people and infesting them with their evil. Now there are criminal gangs and deaths are resulting. That is not the purpose of charity.

I commend my colleagues on their raising of this issue. I am delighted it is not being opposed and I hope the Minister of State will take back to her colleagues the sentiments that have been expressed here this evening.