Paddy McHugh (Galway East, Independent)

I am glad of the opportunity to speak on the Bill. It is wide-ranging legislation which seeks to amend and extend the powers of the Garda Síochána in the investigation of offences and includes the provision for the admissibility in evidence of certain witness statements.

The first issue I wish to address is the admissibility in evidence of certain witness statements. I could never understand the culture that accepted the withdrawal of statements even at the risk of arriving at decisions which were clearly wrong. We all remember the genesis of this particular section which involved a well-known Limerick criminal.

This Bill provides that a person sent for trial can have statements made by him or her to gardaí admitted as evidence, even though the witness denies making the statements or refuses to give evidence. This is to be welcomed as the position heretofore was making a laughing stock of the courts and sapping the morale of gardaí who had to endure the ridiculous situation of a criminal or criminal associates clearly lying by denying they had made a statement, which they clearly had, or withdrawing a statement in a clear attempt to frustrate the courts or, even worse, withdrawing it under duress from others. A continuation of this ridiculous situation would have had the effect of undermining the courts and surely would have left gardaí asking themselves why they bothered.

The greatest way to undermine the pillars of society is to allow criminals give the two fingers to the institutions of State. That is what was happening in this case. If the Bill did nothing else, other than this, it would be worthwhile legislation. In a democracy we could not allow a situation to continue where persons were forced to withdraw statements under duress from the criminal fraternity.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill that allow for the authorising of a search by a chief superintendent without a search warrant in certain circumstances. It appears excessively bureaucratic to have members of the Garda obtain a search warrant from a District Court judge in circumstances where they are aware there are stolen goods on a premises. This is an unnecessary burden placed on the work of gardaí and further frustrates and hinders them in their work. If people do not have anything to hide, they should have no objection to the forces of law and order entering their premises. If they have something to hide, why should the forces of law and order not be in a position to gain access as quickly as possible and with the least bureaucratic resistance as possible? This is a practical measure which will assist the Garda in its work.

One of the scourges of our communities is anti-social behaviour. I am not satisfied that all that can be done to root out anti-social behaviour is being done. What we need is a comprehensive community policing system. It may sound dated and old hat but gardaí are needed on the beat and in sufficient numbers to allow them time to work in the community to get to know the people to find out who exactly is engaging in anti-social behaviour and to frustrate them.

I am not convinced that the cumbersome no-leader, multi-agency approach is the way forward. The involvement of the social services, juvenile liaison officers, the Department of Education and Science and social workers could be described as a windy, convoluted and excessively bureaucratic approach to dealing with problems which, in many cases, could be nipped in the bud if more gardaí were on the beat interacting with communities and liaising with community leaders. I do not agree that Irish society has changed so much that the notion of a return to the old way of policing would not work. If we had the required number of gardaí it would work.

This brings me to the thorny issue of the Government promise to recruit 2,000 additional gardaí. The promise does not reflect the reality and the number of additional gardaí recruited was just a fraction of what was promised. The reality of the Government's broken promise in this area is that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and his Government colleagues can introduce all the legislation they like but it will not be enforced because of the lack of gardaí.

Many of today's anti-social problems have their origins in planning inefficiencies throughout the years under successive Governments. Large housing estates with no facilities are breeding grounds for anti-social behaviour. While this is well recognised it is ignored. The Government has yet to take decisions to eliminate the blight of bad planning.

A case in point is the Planning and Development Act 2000 introduced by the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Dempsey. He was very courageous in introducing the social housing obligations in that legislation. He had been inspired to do so for a number of reasons one of which was the need for social integration in our housing developments — a very laudable aspiration, but one which regrettably did not survive for long.

His successor as Minister, Deputy Cullen, was not a wet week in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government when he rowed back on this element of the legislation and introduced a number of ways developers could meet their social housing obligations, including a provision whereby developers could meet their social housing obligations on land other than lands within the site of the development, a very retrograde step, no doubt introduced at the behest of big business and big builders. This change in the legislation has resulted in a developer in County Galway who is providing state-of-the-art expensive housing for the well-heeled intelligentsia in a site in Oranmore in the constituency of Galway West meeting his social housing obligations not in Oranmore but 30 miles away in Headford, which is in the constituency of Galway East. This is an absolute disgrace and has come about because the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, changed legislation introduced by his socially conscious predecessor, Deputy Noel Dempsey, at the behest of big builders.

This is the kind of decision that guarantees that we will have segregated communities with no integration leading to a continuation of anti-social behaviour. This is the clearest modern-day example of the creation of a two-tier society that one could imagine. It is a nauseating concept resulting from shameful direct Government action.

The elderly in my constituency of Galway East are in fear of being invaded in their homes, attacked, hurt and robbed by marauding gangs terrorising rural Ireland. Our senior citizens deserve better protection from the forces of law and order and from the State than they are getting at present. However, they are not being afforded that protection by the Garda Síochána because it does not have personnel to provide the service to which our senior citizens are entitled. In a so-called caring society with a so-called concerned Government it is disgraceful that senior citizens who lived their lives with their doors open to everybody should now be prisoners in their own homes, living in fear for their lives.

I welcome the many good elements of the Bill. However, it is pointless to pass legislation through this House when the resources and personnel are not being provided to enforce it. I object to discussing legislation on the blind, as it were. The Criminal Justice Bill 2004 was presented to the House and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform then informed us that he intended introducing major and extensive amendments. Such a modus operandi makes a mockery of the House.

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