Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I join the Taoiseach and Deputy Kenny in expressing my horror at the three gun murders which occurred since the House met last Thursday. Mr. Eddie Ward, another man in the wrong place at the wrong time, joins a list of people, including Ms Donna Cleary and Mr. Anthony Campbell, who have been gunned down in cold blood. There have been 14 gun murders this year.

In 1997 prior to his election to Government, the Taoiseach told the country that he would make the fight against crime his priority. He said the Fianna Fáil message to the drug barons and criminal gangs was simple. He said he would not accept them, they would no longer be allowed to hold sway over our communities and they would not live in luxury with impunity because Fianna Fáil had a plan to arrest them, prosecute them and put them out of business. Since the Taoiseach made that statement in 1997, there have been more than 140 gun murders in the country and only one in six of those murders has resulted in a conviction. In five out of every six, the gunmen have not been arrested, prosecuted or put out of business.

The Taoiseach may talk about prison spaces, but the prison spaces are empty. There are 27 cells awaiting those not convicted of the 27 gun murders last year. There are 20 cells awaiting those not convicted of 20 of the 21 gun murders in 2005 and 18 prison spaces await those not convicted of 18 of the 20 gun murders in 2003. Will the Taoiseach explain why five of every six gun murderers in the past ten years have got away with their crime? Is it not because they got away with it that the problem is continuing and we see a continuing spate of increasingly vicious gun murder? What will the Taoiseach do to deal with this problem that he has not done in the past ten years? What does he now say to the Irish people when the vast majority of the gun murderers of the past ten years, who committed their crimes on his watch, have not been arrested, prosecuted or put out of business?

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