Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise the horrific murder of James Purdue, aged 22, at Grattan Wood, Donaghmede, last Sunday night. This brutal assassination was the sixth horrific murder in the Dublin North-East area in the past five months. On 2 June, Keith Fitzsimons, aged 23, was savagely murdered in a garden at Millbrook Road. On 29 May, Patrick Harte was shot dead in Edenmore Avenue, Raheny. On 24 April, Gerard Goulding from central Dublin was callously murdered at St. Donagh's Road and on 5 March public opinion was rightly outraged when a young innocent mother, Ms Donna Cleary, aged 22, was a tragic victim of an appalling gun attack on a home in Coolock. Prior to her murder, a young Latvian man was stabbed to death in Artane.

The people of Dublin North-East whom I represent are outraged and deeply upset by this appalling catalogue of murders. My constituents are shocked that such horrors could be perpetrated on peaceful residential streets. They are rightly angry that children and ordinary householders have had to witness murder crime scenes and the spectacle of killers operating with apparent impunity in quiet residential streets. They are also rightly fearful that another such atrocity could be perpetrated at any time.

As I informed the Taoiseach yesterday, the chief superintendent for the Dublin north metropolitan region, Peter Maguire, has called for political leadership in response to these appalling gun crimes and the vicious, drug-fuelled gang criminality which produced them. I call on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to give such leadership. The Minister indicated yesterday that he had reported to the Cabinet that dealing with the murderous gangs who perpetrate gun homicides is not a question of resources. If this is the case, why are vulnerable communities not saturated with gardaí and specialist surveillance teams and why is blatant and regular drug dealing not stamped out and the criminals arrested and charged? The Taoiseach and the Minister never gave the Garda authorities sufficient resources to tackle this scourge. In my Garda district, for example, only 200 gardaí struggle to meet the needs of almost 100,000 people, a larger population than that of Dublin city.

Our 25 year campaign for a new Garda station in Donaghmede has gone unheeded and unanswered. Even Operation Anvil, as the Acting Chairman, Deputy Costello, has noted many times in the House, was only an ad hoc response to terrible crimes and the Garda authorities were not given sufficient resources to extend the operation to the whole north and west sides of Dublin. Responses in areas such as CCTV have been feeble, disorganised and poorly resourced.

In a thoughtful article in yesterday's edition of The Irish Times, criminologist Dr. Ian O'Donnell noted that high detection rates and a high probability of arrest are the best deterrents to the types of appalling crimes we have sadly witnessed in my constituency in recent months. It is time for the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to introduce new policies to remove evil gunmen from our streets once and for all and create a society in which casual and nihilistic violence will not be permitted and will not arise.

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