Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The report of the Independent Monitoring Commission drew attention to the fact that although, to a certain extent, it did not see the Real IRA or the Continuity IRA posing a fundamental threat at this time, it noted both groups were heavily involved in crime. It listed crimes such as drug dealing, tiger kidnapping, robbery, extortion, smuggling, fuel laundering and, specifically in the case of the Continuity IRA, running brothels.

The Taoiseach knows working class parts of Dublin, in particular, and the outer reaches of Dublin are under assault from criminal gangs. We have so many murders it is difficult to keep up with them all, including the horrific one reported this morning on RTE. Does the Taoiseach see the Criminal Assets Bureau, or some organisation like it, having a role on an all-Ireland basis? Money is the fuel that allows these people to continue what they are doing. The difficulty is that the problem is not just along the Border, where there have been horrific murders, including the murder suffered by young Paul Quinn and the aftermath for his family, and also what has happened in Crossmaglen.

There are working-class communities suffering the tortures of the damned because of the crime links to dissident organisations. One can put what has happened with dissident organisations together with the crime wave the west and north-west side of Dublin, and my own constituency and that of Deputies Carey and Shortall, are enduring. Is the Taoiseach sure it is realistic to say that the Garda is satisfied with how it is containing these people? They may not be very active in Northern Ireland but are wreaking havoc in the Republic.

On the reference by the Independent Monitoring Commission to running brothels, such an activity, as the Taoiseach probably knows, is now heavily associated in this Republic with people trafficking and the horrendous consequences involved with that. Does the Government have a strategy to address that part of the IMC report?

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