Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Taoiseach is out of touch. I read in one of the newspapers this morning about his doing six hours' canvassing on Saturday and another few hours on Sunday. If he did it at the right times of the day, he would know that the issue is not law but the lack of enforcement. The Taoiseach keeps coming to the House and offering solutions in the shape of more law and tougher speeches from the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The fact is that considerable powers are available to gardaí, but they either do not have the resources or they are not deployed in a fashion that allows them to implement the law. People in extremis in their own homes are dialling Garda stations from which they receive no response. There is an absence of community gardaí patrolling neighbourhoods. Gardaí are simply not there to do the job that modern living conditions require. People are besieged in their own homes, persecuted and harassed for no apparent reason.

For example, the Taoiseach talks about more law. What about the Child Care Act? It has been on the Statute Book for the past four years, but the Taoiseach has still not invoked major sections. Part 8 covers widespread community sanctions, but it has not yet been implemented. If there were such widespread community sanctions and those young vandals were required to clean up some of the mess they had created——

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