Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

He refuses to recognise his problem. The problem is that while there has been a 3% increase in the overall statistics in 2005, there has been a dramatic increase in the most serious and violent headline crimes. Murder is up by46%. If that is not a dramatic increase, I do not know what is. Rape section 4, serious rape, is up by 33%. Burglary, which is the largest category of all, is up to 26,000 reported burglaries, an increase of 6%. Possession of drugs for supply or sale is up by 20% and possession of firearms is up by 16%. If we add to these figures the number of gangland killings last year, the increase is 250%.

What do we mean by dramatic? The Minister must face reality. What makes matters worse and is even more dramatic is that in the past three months of 2005, overall headline crime increased by 10%. What will happen in 2006? It is time the Minister recognised the reality. If he does not and does not realise he has a problem, he cannot tackle it. The Minister's problem is that he does not even recognise he has a serious problem in headline crime.

The most serious category of all is murder through firearms. The detection and conviction rate for this is abysmal. Only 16% of convictions were for the murders committed over the past five years, an abysmal detection rate. We have the lowest detection and conviction rate for the most serious crime. Criminals realise that they can commit that type of crime with impunity.

The Minister stated that he will take significant steps to deal with the dramatic increase in crime. What are those steps? Operations Crossover and Anvil have not succeeded and we have the figures to show that. They may have succeeded in dealing with other crimes, but not with the dramatic increase outlined by these figures. Operation Anvil operates on the basis of Garda overtime. This means the Minister expects tired gardaí who have already done a day's work to come out again to try to deal with the most serious crime of all, gangland crime. The Minister must build into the Garda plan on an annual basis, outside of overtime, an approach to dealing with headline crimes. Otherwise he will not deal with them at all. If he does not get a grip on reality and face up to what is happening, how can he expect to reassure citizens that he is in charge?

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