Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The Minister will be aware of the daylight robbery of €1.5 million cash in transit in the past three weeks and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform wringing his hands in dismay at the failure of his nonsensical voluntary code to prevent it happening. It is totally unacceptable that there is no statutory code in place to regulate the delivery of large sums of money by private security firms. Many of the large private security firms operating here are not even licensed to operate here.

The Private Security Services Act was passed in 2004, the purpose of which was, first, to licence the private security industry, which we all know to be a burgeoning industry with numbers far in excess of the combined Army and Garda, and, second, to establish proper standards for the industry. However, the Minister's intervention and meddling in the work of the Private Security Authority has resulted in a voluntary code of practice being established which is honoured more in its breach than in its observance by the security firms. The security firms have been laughing all the way to the bank. The €1.5 million has been stolen with ridiculous ease because none of the "gentleman's agreement" with the Minister was implemented by the firms delivering the cash. They agreed the agreement but they did not bother to implement it, and the Minister did nothing to ensure they would implement it.

Likewise, the Minister's stewardship of the Garda has been just as haphazard and inefficient. There was no Garda escort on any of the three recent large deliveries amounting to at least the €1.5 million which was stolen. Just as it might be in "Keystone Cops", the local gardaí where the large sums of money were being delivered were not informed about the deliveries in their area of jurisdiction. They were totally ignorant of the delivery. Once again, the Minister's ineptitude and arrogance has put the lives of security personnel at risk and given another victory to the criminals.

The Private Security Authority, which is up and running for some time, is obliged under the law to provide a strategic plan and lay it before this House. As this has not been done, the authority is in breach of its own statutory requirements. We have been working on this legislation since 2001. I had to raise the matter with the Taoiseach on a couple of occasions to get the Minister to move on it. Eventually it was passed in 2004. It took the Minister until 2005 to set up the authority, and having done so, he provides a voluntary code rather than the statutory code provided for under the legislation. Nothing has come before this House in terms of the plan of the authority in regard to licensing practices and standards that must be implemented. It appears that we are passing legislation in this House, the Minister is bypassing it and the body set up to ensure the matter came before the House once the plan had been drawn up has not done so. We must have answers as to what is happening in this area before more lives are put at risk and more cash is stolen.

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