Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to go through a couple of things in the Department of Justice Vote, specifically the issue of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and the commitment from the Department to establish how it will look after that, deal with it and work to propagate and provide a service for those who are in the most dire situations. It almost goes back to the Courts Service part of the Vote because they are linked. Could it be possible for there to be some mechanism for people who are in really stressful situations? I have spoken to people about this. One particular woman, who was in a controlling and terrible situation for many years, had the courage to come out of that. She was physically abused as well. It was mainly about the whole coercive control aspect of her life, which dominated her life. When she came out of that situation, she went to a solicitor to look to progress things and move things on. She came up against a barrier whereby she could not get hearings in the courts. She finds the system so difficult to deal with. There are huge delays in that regard. It is getting better and more people are coming forward, and we need to encourage them to do that, but when they come forward they find that the system is not there to accept them, work with them and progress their situation. In a sense, it is almost a retraumatising of that person, who feels that they are not believed. As part of dealing with domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, there must be a system in place to assure people who come forward in these circumstances they will be dealt with efficiently by the Courts Service to get their cases heard. This is my first point.

On the youth justice programme, I welcome the additional provision of funds and the setting up of more youth diversion projects around the country. All of this is progress. The success of these projects is something that we all recognise and understand but there is not nearly enough of them. It is not enough and I believe the fund we are putting into it needs to be doubled. I am aware that finding staff to do that kind of work is another issue. We spoke earlier about the Prison Service and overcrowding. If we got this programme right, it would resolve the other problem down the line where we end up with so many people in our prisons.

That issue needs to be dealt with as well.

I have one other point. I know there was a slight disagreement when I said we do not want to have a country in which we see more people locked up. It was said that because of our expanded population, we may need more prison services. I would say we do not need more prison services. What we need is more secure psychiatric services and spaces because an awful lot of the people who end up in prison should not be there at all. They should be in a secure psychiatric space. That needs to be looked at.

In regard to the Legal Aid Board, the rates paid need to be reviewed because it is an issue that is brought up on many occasions.

On Deputy Ó Ríordáin's point in regard to the temporary protection directives and the work done in respect of international protection applicants, many people do not understand that when somebody comes here and claims international protection, they are legally entitled to get fair hearing of their case. If they feel their case was not heard fairly, they are entitled to seek a review. They are entitled to appeal and to get legal aid to do that and for all those things happen. That means that it can take much longer than we expect. I am conscious of that. While I agree in one sense with the Deputy's view that we need to see these processes sped up, they should not be sped up at the expense of the person getting justice. We need to be careful in respect of that.

Coming to the issue of racism, all these attacks and so on - and Deputy Ó Ríordáin mentioned National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, and Covid-19 - the same people who were shouting at people going into injection centres are the same people who are now roaring and shouting outside direct provision centres. They are the same people leading this charge. There are people in the community who have, for many good reasons, issues with the Government around not providing enough housing, around the health service or perhaps around employment, schools or whatever. They find there is huge competition for resources and see more people coming in which intensifies that competition for those same scarce resources and they have issues around that. Those people are being led the wrong way by extremely manipulative people who are setting out a very narrow, horrible agenda of hate and fear. That is what they are trying to build up. We have an obligation to all work together. We have our disagreements across the Chamber about politics and about what the Government is failing to do, although it tells us it is doing its best, but at the same time we all have to recognise we must have a society which is better than that. We need to work together to ensure we provide the proper, clear information to people and an understanding as to how and why people are in this country, what they are seeking, what their rights and entitlements are, and how we can progress this situation forward.

We cannot have a situation where this country falls into having those kinds of national front-type marches which we have seen in other countries and the horribleness of that. I think of the Ku Klux Klan. We have so many of these types of groups in different parts of the world that we look down on as being terrible and horrible and yet we see them starting to grow here. Those weeds of fascism have to be stamped out. I take issue with some of the Taoiseach's remarks today that the far left is as bad as the far right. That is nonsense and needs to be clearly stated. People who are standing up against fascism have a right to do so but fascism has no right. We need to all be united in our clarity around that.