Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

This week another two men lost their lives in brutal murders. One was beaten to death with iron bars and the other was gunned down in cold blood. Everybody in the country recognises that Ireland has become a far less civilised place in which to live in the past ten years. In that time gun crime has doubled, trebled and quadrupled. Gun murders are six times what they were in 1998 and detection is down by75%. Conviction rates have fallen and it seems that zero tolerance is a distant memory.

It appears that the Taoiseach has given up on this job. His comment yesterday to the effect that society should stop tolerating violence misses the point completely. It is not as if this is an 'us and them' situation, that criminals live in a gangland or crime land that is entirely different from the rest of the country. People have walked innocently into a lethal hail of gunfire and have died as a consequence. Society, said the Taoiseach, should not put up with this, but society does not put up with it. Did the taxi driver put up with the lethal hail of gunfire into his vehicle yesterday? Did the three young women in the back of the car tolerate a brutal assault by mere chance? Does the public tolerate a violent murder every five days? Do they tolerate this kind of vicious crime? It seems that in gangland Ireland if one stays silent one will live but if one does not stay silent one may well be next to die.

The Taoiseach fails to appreciate that people look on him as the boss, the political boss, of the country. He has been Taoiseach for the past ten years and is presiding over this situation. It is not just about investing additional millions of euro. As Deputy Charles Flanagan pointed out this morning, there is a fundamental requirement on the Government to respond in a multidimensional way to deal with this problem. I met a garda sergeant in Finglas two years ago who showed me on a computer screen the 17 serious cases reported to his station in a two-hour period. He told me that every night the gardaí in Finglas are in fire brigade action but that they are 15 years too late. Geography, environment and circumstances dictate that the John Dalys of this world — may God rest his soul — and all the other people who have been gunned down in gangland war die because of the inability of the Government to deal with the situation. How does the Taoiseach, as head of Government, intend to respond to the latest set of atrocities?

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