Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

The Minister began his contribution by saying this issue should be put in context. He is quite correct; there is a context. Wayne Doherty, Roy Collins, Donna Cleary, Shane Geoghegan and many others have been mentioned in the debate and we should put the issue in that context. However, it would do them a disservice to turn our criminal justice system on its head. The DPP currently has, as the Minister said, the privilege to refer cases such as these to the Special Criminal Court.

The context we should put this in are the replies to my comments which Deputy Rabbitte read out, namely, that there is no context and the opposite has been proven by the Minister in his own words. He also said the Bill was drafted based on the evidence produced by the Garda Commissioner and that he is acting on that. It is a pity we do not have the opportunity to debate this issue with the Garda Commissioner and have the statistics he would be able to rely on. It is also a pity the Minister does not act on everything else the Garda Commissioner asked for, including money for barracks, Internet, radios, extra units of the drugs squad and a range of other issues.

The other context is that the Special Criminal Court has been continuously criticised by the UN, the Human Rights Commission, the ICCL and, in particular, the Government's Hederman committee, which looked at the role of the Special Criminal Court and whether it should be extended or ended. It found, regrettably, that it should remain in place, but specifically stated that there should be no further extension of scheduling offences to it.

I will not labour the point because other Deputies wish to contribute. What message is going out? In some ways the message to criminal gangs is that they have won and have managed to turn our system on its head, and we are declaring martial law or its equivalent instead of using the existing laws, properly resourcing the Garda Síochána and using the new Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Bill. The key point on this amendment and on this section is that we are discussing juries. Steps could be taken which could lead to the protection of juries and could make it impossible or virtually impossible to intimidate them, but these steps have not been taken.

Reference to Limerick is, rightly, made on a continuous basis. However, when there was a problem the court was moved out of Limerick and there were successful prosecutions. To my knowledge there has been no jury intimidation here. Perhaps this is where the first steps should have been taken and perhaps the court should not sit in Limerick until such time as there is confidence once again in the ability to find juries. In Ireland the level of convictions by jury trials is quite high in comparison to other countries.

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