Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

As regards the incident, at 4.30 a.m. on 26 March a shooting occurred between the M50 motorway and the Lucan road. A car containing five passengers, two male and three female, had several shots fired at it. Two of the passengers were wearing bullet-proof vests. The driver of the car received a flesh wound to the elbow and was brought to hospital. He was reluctant to stay and discharged himself. He declined to make any comment. He had sustained gunshot wounds just two weeks previously on a Saturday morning in the Finglas area. He also declined to make a comment at that stage. The other four passengers in the car have made voluntary statements. The scene was preserved and a search was conducted of a section of the M50 to locate anything of evidential value.

Deputy Rabbitte knows and correctly said that where this gang of thugs is concerned, most of this has to do with drugs. They are probably involved in other areas of crime as well. The Garda has been actively involved against them for a considerable time. Significant resources have been deployed on Operation Anvil in terms of numbers and overtime. The Garda Commissioner has assured the Minister that the level of resources will enable the force to deploy significant intelligence driven methods and high intensity operations against organised crime, especially drugs and particularly in this area.

Operation Anvil was set up to deal with the difficulties in the west Dublin area. The Garda is concentrating substantial resources in terms of manpower, overtime and intelligence gathering on what it considers to be a highly dangerous group of criminals. With a view to augmenting these efforts, the Garda Commissioner has allocated 50 additional gardaí to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which I referred to last week. Their sole duty is to target the groups involved in organised crime. That unit is headed by a detective chief superintendent.

To date Operation Anvil has yielded 1,792 arrests, including 33 for murder, 374 firearms seizures, 3,934 vehicle seizures, 26,231 Garda checkpoints, 8,347 searches for drugs, 873 for thefts and 776 for firearms. These figures show the level of activity but also indicate the level of viciousness involved in these gangs. We have seen their activities over the past six months. If the Deputy wants, I will go back over the figures for 1994 to 1996. However, I believe he knows them and that is not really the point. Obviously the Criminal Justice Bill will help in some of these areas. However, on reading the reports I am convinced that it is not just a question of resources. Like me, Deputy Rabbitte might say that if a person gets shot on a Saturday morning, refuses to say anything and releases himself from hospital only to get shot two weeks later by fly-past gangs and say nothing again, he should perhaps be arrested for his own safety.

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