Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Last week the Central Statistics Office published the headline crime statistics for 2007, which are the worst for several years. In the last quarter of 2007, headline crimes were 6% higher than the corresponding period in 2006. As Members are aware, headline crimes constitute the more serious crimes to be recorded. In 2007, almost 105,000 headline crimes were recorded in this State, which is more than 2,000 serious crimes per week or almost 300 per day. They included the crime of murder, which has increased from 60 to 78 in 2007, which was the highest number of killings to occur in the State since the Civil War. This trend has continued in recent weeks. A gun murder took place in Sligo recently, as did the attempted murder of a well-known criminal in Dublin. Yesterday's news suggests we have exported our gang wars to Spain.

I do not subscribe to the notion that whenever a crime takes place, the Government is at fault. However, it is the Government's responsibility to reverse the trend of increasing crime in the State. The Government has set this objective for itself a number of times. I again ask the Taoiseach to take up a number of proposals that have been made by the Labour Party. Labour has tabled two pieces of legislation on the Order Paper, the first of which is to put on a statutory basis the witness protection programme, while the second is to improve the surveillance in which the Garda can engage.

In addition, will the Taoiseach take up Labour's proposal to increase greatly the number of community gardaí? In particular, will he arrange for the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to discuss with the Garda authorities the possibility of deploying increasing numbers of community gardaí by drawing on the increased numbers of gardaí who will graduate shortly from Templemore?

In that context, I remind the Taoiseach of a matter about which I was reminded recently, when the welcome announcement was made of the plans to renew the area of Moyross in Limerick. I refer to a speech made in this House on 11 March 1992 by the late Deputy Jim Kemmy, in which he described the conditions in parts of that city. At that time, his simple request was for a 24-hour Garda presence in some of the affected estates. It is a great pity that the stitch in time approach then suggested by Deputy Kemmy was not adopted, as it might have saved much trouble in the meantime. However, we can learn from it and I ask the Taoiseach whether he will take up the two approaches the Labour Party has been recommending for some time to deal with the escalating crime problem.

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