Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

I welcome this Bill and I appreciate the advice of the Attorney General, which deems it necessary to underpin the establishment of certain agencies with new legislation. Our party's spokesperson on the environment, Deputy Phil Hogan, has dealt with the generality of the Bill, so I will confine my remarks to the extension of the remit of the regeneration agencies, established on the north and south side of Limerick, to include St. Mary's Park and Ballinacurra Weston, as proposed in section 5.

A number of large city council estates in Limerick have been socially and economically deprived for many years. In recent years, due principally to the widespread drugs trade, these estates have been reduced to a state of lawlessness, which has endangered the lives of residents, including children. The criminality which has been fuelled and funded by the drugs trade, has been brought to a totally unacceptable level by the widespread use of firearms, including the use of automatic weapons. The lawlessness and criminality have been further fuelled by the feud between certain Limerick families. The details of this ongoing feud have been well recited in the media, so I do not need to elaborate.

The regeneration agencies, provided for in section 5, arise from the report of Mr. John Fitzgerald, the former Dublin city manager, who was asked by the Government to examine the areas in question and bring forward recommendations. I fully support the recommendations of the Fitzgerald report and I hope they will all be implemented in full in the shortest possible time, so that areas and communities such as Southill, Moyross, Ballinacurra Weston and St. Mary's Park are regenerated both socially and economically, and that residents may again live a safe and fulfilling life, and raise their families in peace and harmony.

The agencies have already commenced their work and have been prompt in doing so. The newly appointed director, Mr. Brendan Kenny, has already established good relationships with local residents and with political and civic leaders. There are some problems, however, with the powers of the agencies. Limerick City Council will continue as the housing authority for the city. Given that the regeneration agencies are charged with knocking down the existing houses and the rebuilding of new houses for these communities, the fact that Limerick City Council continues to be the housing agency is, in my view, anomalous.

The regeneration agencies intend to construct new houses for residents, which they will organise on a small cluster basis within the footprint or proximate to the existing estates. The chief executive of the agency has said, however, that he will exclude families with criminal records from the new houses. He claims the project will not succeed if these families are rehoused in the new housing clusters and is emphatic that without Garda clearance they will not be rehoused.

It is unclear to whom the responsibility for rehousing these families will devolve. Presumably, Limerick City Council, as the housing authority, will shoulder the burden. The uncertainty about this issue is already undermining confidence in the agencies, especially in private housing estates in the city and suburbs where residents fear the city council will rehouse these criminal families in their neighbourhoods, through house purchase or through the supplementary rent scheme.

This is a serious issue and I would like the Minister of State or the Minister, Deputy Gormley, to pay personal attention to it. I saw a regeneration project start in Southill some years ago and in the last ten years some €6.5 million was spent on it. Quite frankly, if one went down to the banks of the Shannon and skimmed that amount in euro coins across the water, one would have obtained more value for money. That is because the €6.5 million that was put into O'Malley Park did not last candlelight time since all the houses were wrecked and burned out. We could go down the same road here unless this is handled very carefully.

Mr. Brendan Kenny has been well received in Limerick. I heard him on the "Today with Pat Kenny" radio programme. Pat Kenny asked him how many criminal families he was talking about. He replied that there were 30 families on the north side and 30 families on the south side that he would be excluding from rehousing. He was then asked how many people were in each family and he said the wider family would be about ten people. Therefore we are talking about 600 people who will not be rehoused by the regeneration agencies. These are the families that the Garda Síochána will certify are involved in criminal activity, so they will be excluded from the tenancies. That is the policy position at present.

A Tipperary man facetiously e-mailed Pat Kenny to say that there were not 600 bad men in the worst days of the wild west, so what hope is there for Limerick. One can joke about the situation and there is a lot of black humour about these issues. At the moment, however, every residents' association in middle class, private housing estates in Limerick is afraid that if the agencies do not rehouse the criminal families, the housing authority will have to do so. Since the housing authority has no building programme, they can only rehouse people by the acquisition of private houses in these estates. It is a serious issue and has the potential to take away much of the support that is there for the regeneration agencies. I am not sure what the solution is but the Minister's Department must define the housing authority for Limerick city. Will the regeneration agencies or the city council be responsible? If both are involved, what are the demarcation lines?

Mr. John Fitzgerald made many recommendations and they were all excellent, in my view. He said that the success of the regeneration project depends on restoring law and order to the areas in question. The social and economic recommendations will not work if this is not done. We have seen in recent times that very little progress has been made. The public is familiar with the ongoing saga of family feuding in Limerick and the frustration of ordinary, law-abiding citizens. I believe the Government must get a grip on this situation as nobody else has the power and influence to do so. To date, the Government and the authorities have been reactive rather than proactive.

I respectfully suggest that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform consider the measures I propose because, if he did so, he might reach first base on Mr. John Fitzgerald's list of recommendations for the regeneration agencies. He might also restore law and order, which is a prerequisite to other objectives.

The Fitzgerald report recommended 100 additional gardaí for Limerick and when the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform visited the area last week, he said 80 of them had been appointed. That afternoon, a spokesman from the Garda press office in Garda headquarters said 60 extra gardaí had been appointed. Whichever of these figures, presented on the same day, is correct, 100 gardaí have not been appointed and this number must be reached immediately.

Gardaí must be deployed to community policing duties and to combat gangland crime, but the additional gardaí have not been deployed in such a fashion; many are on traffic duty and ordinary Garda activities. The extra gardaí were introduced for a specific purpose but have not been deployed to fulfil that purpose. Deployment is difficult because, for example, there were two murders in Limerick last week and 120 gardaí dealt with the ensuing investigations. The Garda district covering the city and county consists of slightly fewer than 600 gardaí of all ranks and removing 120 disrupts everything else. When a murder occurs, community gardaí are removed from their posts to cover the investigation, which leaves a lack of gardaí in the communities. Extra gardaí are needed and more attention must be paid to how they are deployed.

Many new, inexperienced gardaí from Templemore are entering the city and should be advised and led by experienced sergeants. There was a commitment that this would be done and one initiative saw the sergeant from Patrick's Well transferred to the city, but Patrick's Well is only down the road and the area has its own problems. The sergeant from Ardnacrusha was also transferred to the city and these moves were presented as a beefing-up at the supervisory level of the Garda in Limerick, which is nonsense.

We need a Garda assistant commissioner appointed to lead the Garda in Limerick because, under the current structure, the assistant commissioner is in Cork. Requests for extra resources and policy direction requiring guidance further up the line must be directed to Cork in the first instance. The gardaí in Limerick need a clear chain of command with a direct relationship with the Garda Commissioner. This can only be done if an assistant commissioner is based in Limerick. I believe the current chief superintendent would be an ideal candidate for the job, but that is not the issue. The issue is that when resources or initiative are required promptly, the request must be able to travel up and down the line to Garda headquarters very quickly.

A small, permanent unit of the emergency response unit should be established in Limerick. It has been introduced on a number of occasions from Dublin and Cork but in such cases it was merely reacting to events that had already occurred. This is largely a public relations exercise. There should be a small emergency response unit in Limerick all the time to support the Garda force there. For example, when gardaí enter a difficult part of the city searching for firearms they need backup. It would not be practical, in such circumstances, to send a request to Cork that would be forwarded to Dublin, eventually resulting in the emergency response unit, ERU, arriving three weeks later, after another horrific murder has occurred. It is necessary to have local resources for quick responses.

There should be a sub-office of the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, in Limerick. The CAB works on the basis of pooling information from Revenue, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Garda and other agencies. If an officer of CAB, based permanently in Limerick, was in constant contact with senior gardaí and Revenue representatives, the criminal families could be targeted and it would be possible to follow the money trail. Ultimately, all of this gangland crime is fuelled by the drugs trade, which is lucrative. CAB has not had a major success relating to Limerick criminals in recent years.

The courts must be more active as many people question the leniency of sentences given; it is felt that they do not act as a deterrent. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence but, in practice, a convicted person may serve less than ten years. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform cannot interfere or direct judges to sentence in a particular way but he has the power to consult with the presidents of the different courts. I believe he should consult the Presidents of the High, Circuit and District Courts to ask them to bring their judges together to discuss uniformity of sentencing policy and whether sentencing, in addition to its other functions, acts as a deterrent any longer. The judges could also address the matter of when a mandatory life sentence should be given. In the case of gangland murders, I feel judges should accompany a sentence with a recommendation that at least 20 years be served. Such a strong recommendation from the courts would be one way to address the problem and ensure a criminal is not back on the streets in eight or nine years.

The mayhem and murder of gangland activities are fuelled by drugs and any residents of Limerick will know the families involved. We knew their grandfathers, who were ordinary, decent criminals. We knew their fathers, who engaged in breaking and entering, and went back and forth to court, picking up six month sentences here and there. What has changed is the amount of money generated by the drugs trade; this has turned these people into very serious criminals with access to resources like automatic weapons and with the money to pay people to commit contract murders and intimidate witnesses. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform must attack the underlying cause of these problems, the drugs trade. The problem does not apply only to Limerick because the gangs there have been so successful in the drugs trade that their footprints are now far outside the area. They are part of a network that supplies drugs nationally and this is a serious issue.

It is time to go after the godfathers. We all heard in the news last week that the families of the victims of the Omagh bombing are taking a civil action against the people they think are responsible. Mr. Michael McKevitt, reputed to be the leader of the Real IRA, was one of the people named in the action and he is currently serving 20 years in prison because he was convicted under section 6 of the Offences Against the State Act 1998. The specific offence was that he organised terrorist activities. I feel the Minister could enact legislation to enshrine a similar offence relating to organising gangland activities. This would be equally successful because the intelligence information provided to the courts by a chief superintendent of the Garda would carry serious weight, as it did in the McKevitt conviction. I strongly advocate that the Minister and the law officers in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform set about this task, enact legislation that hits the godfathers and have a specific offence of organising ganland criminality and gangland activity.

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