Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputies Pat Breen, Hayes and Durkan.

I welcome the opportunity to congratulate Deputy Jim O'Keeffe on introducing this Bill, with Fine Gael's full support. It is necessary legislation as it not only ensures that a person has a right to defend his or her home and family, but also that the person can feel safe in that home. The Bill is also important as a deterrent in that it will send a clear message to the 500 burglars who break into homes each week that such crimes will no longer be tolerated and that the State will bring to bear all the forces at its disposal to ensure such does not happen.

The legislation is particularly important in rural areas. All Deputies who represent such areas know of elderly people, widows on their own or others, such as wives who are at home with their families because husbands are on shift duty, who are frightened due to the level of burglary and the sometimes associated violence. In all our parishes, there are elderly people who have had the remainder of their lives destroyed and shortened because of muggers or intruders who need money for drugs or whatever. Such intruders enter homes, beat up people and sometimes take their lives for €20, €30 or €40.

Crime levels have dramatically increased and society has a greater tolerance of crime than previously. Levels of murder, assault, street violence, anti-social behaviour and burglary are increasing, but detection rates are decreasing. This Bill returns some level of power to home occupiers to defend their homes. Currently, they are at risk of being prosecuted as law-breakers or sued by intruders if they defend their homes in certain circumstances.

The Bill does not advocate excessive violence, rather it advocates shifting responsibility from the home occupier to the intruder and puts the onus on the latter to prove whether excessive violence was used. Currently, the occupier must defend a situation in which he or she did not decide or intend to become involved. The criminal intent was on the part of the intruder, but the defender of the home becomes the criminal and can be charged. The victim should not be a criminal. While this Bill protects the rights of the criminal, it introduces a level of justice for the home occupier instead of applying a law to the occupier, as Deputy Jim O'Keeffe said.

We are sending a clear message on breaking into homes, stealing property, endangering people and committing violent acts. There is nothing more traumatic for someone than waking up in bed and finding an intruder holding a knife. People, in particular the elderly or those who are vulnerable, never fully recover from such an experience as it has a deep effect on the psyche. A person possessed of his or her full faculties, strengths and ability to protect himself or herself finds it easier to address that trauma, but it can be distressing for vulnerable people.

This approach is not unique to Ireland. Other jurisdictions have examined this issue, perceived the same problems that the Bill deals with and attempted to address them in the same way, and we are asking the Dáil to do likewise.

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