Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

One of the principal reasons these people who have no respect for life or limb continue to do as they do is that they believe they will not be caught. The annual rate of murder has increased by 42% since the current Government took office in 1997. Teacher unions have reported that teachers are threatened with handguns. Headline crime detection rates have fallen in each of the past four years. These are serious crimes including murder, rape, aggravated assault, burglary and theft. Some 100,000 such crimes are committed every year on the watch of the absent Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. If he survives until next year he will have presided over 500,000 such crimes. After the tragic murder of the innocent bystander Donna Cleary, he stated that it was a watershed in crime. What resources have been put in place to convince the nation that it was a watershed? What evidence shows that her death brought about a watershed in crime detection, handgun crime and the wave of handgun purchases to execute people, which resulted in the murder of innocent people?

The Minister agreed to set up a special Garda gangland unit last year to tackle the spiralling rate of crime. How many officers serve in it and what resources are available to it? What is the programme for the gangland special unit and what are its results to date, given that only 17% of those who committed crimes have had convictions against them? A crime is not solved until a conviction is brought.

Last week I met the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Three gardaí are attending on McCabe scholarships. They have ample experience in successfully dealing with this kind of gangland crime and murder in cities across the United States. In briefing the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Government, is it not time the Garda authorities ensured such expertise is brought to areas of this city where people are terrified that this type of gangland crime will walk in the door, uninvited, resulting in more murders of innocent people? It is time the Government focused on this issue and dealt with it.

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