Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

The James Bond films will be nothing compared with what those guys get up to when they get going. We need to ensure that we can instill confidence in the public that the Government and the establishment of law and order will prevail. I know they will but many people are disconnected. One would want to be very naive to believe, for example, that a witness protection programme in any state could really protect one because all the people involved in a crime know where the witness is placed, no matter what name he or she is given.

This Bill will help but it will not change what is happening because the problem was allowed go too far. We know that there is a major disconnect among people in many housing estates. People do not like to say so publically but there are many areas outside the bad areas of Dublin, Limerick and other cities which the gardaí are not allowed to enter. That is a bad start. Whatever went wrong with the way the Garda management conducts its business, under Government direction, over the past ten or 12 years the concept of the community garda was forgotten. If we do not get information about what is happening on the ground in the best and worst areas we will not have it when we need it most.

Even the worst criminals start small and continue if they get away with anti-social behaviour and so on. I appreciate that many of them come from broken homes where their parents could not care less whether they are in jail or go to school. That is a serious problem for society. Even with the major cutbacks that we must endure over the next few years there should be no reduction in the local activity of the Garda and the intelligence they can gather at community level. As soon as the Garda payroll is cut the problems start. I have never seen a crime being solved or information gathered from a squad car, it is always done on a personal basis by the community garda. Vicious crimes are a different matter. I started my career as a youth officer and I fully appreciate, as most Members do, that the trouble starts at that level but we cannot wait for the evolution of today's youth. While we must work with them we have to take on the other guys now in every shape and form.

I thank the Oireachtas Library for the Bills Digest which provides an excellent resumé of many parts of this Bill that I do not have time to go through. It is an excellent document.

The Bill strikes the balance between the right of the individual and the right of the public to go about its daily business in the community.

I wish to refer to the problem of intimidation. The current backdrop to this country reminds me of Seán O'Casey's play "The Shadow of a Gunman". There are so many people, particularly those connected with the drugs trade, who genuinely believe that if they are ruthless in intimidating all around them and act as armchair generals, they can make people do the dirty work for them, and they will become immensely rich. There is no doubt the drug culture is at the centre of all this. The average age of those involved in the drugs trade has fallen significantly over the years. Many of them in so-called influential positions, who are pulling the strings, are in their early twenties. It is chilling to think of what they are capable of doing. A few years ago, it used to be said that at least those involved were 15 or 20 years older and that they tended not be as austere, harsh or ruthless as the people who are there now.

To take a typical case, a person may arrive in charge of a patch at a young age, from a poor background and with no social skills or education. Nonetheless, that person will have access to millions of euro, and one can imagine what such a person will do to keep control of his so-called kingdom. Against that background, the Bill seeks to allow the Garda Síochána to infiltrate those particular circles. We hope it will do so. It is important to be able to infiltrate these gangs, charge their members in court, obtain convictions and put them behind bars.

More importantly, it will send a signal to the community and to the public at large that if people engage in such activity, they will be caught. Given that only 12% of them were caught in the plast 11 years, they can say it is worth their while because there is an almost 90% chance they will not do time in prison. Unless those figures are changed and we get better results, the problem will multiply. It will happen anywhere there is this sort of loot, which ordinary people cannot imagine. The Saturday night lottery win is nothing compared to what those guys are dealing with. Unless we can infiltrate that terrible circle we will be in for a woeful whirlwind over the next four or five years.

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