Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. He was doing very well until the last three sentences, which were really a contradiction of everything that preceded them. The reality is that the Garda has had an extraordinarily successful year in counteracting organised crime and in dealing with criminal subversion. As the Deputy rightly stated, even one murder is one murder too many, but there has been only one murder this year in Limerick, an area in which there were very substantial difficulties and a large number of homicides in preceding years. The success of the Garda is illustrated by the fact that there are more than 60 members of Limerick gangs currently held by our Prison Service.

In the context of the issue the Deputy raises, the House will of course understand the sensitivity that is in the very nature of operations carried out by the Garda Síochána in the course of countering the activities of paramilitary gangs and that, as a consequence and particularly when such Garda actions are ongoing, Members of the House and I should exercise the utmost caution in respect of what we say in regard to them.

The House will appreciate that the Garda, in counteracting the threat posed by paramilitary groups, succeeds time and time again in preventing them from carrying out planned acts. Of their nature, the detail of a lot of these successes cannot be appropriately put in the public domain. A great many of them never appear in the public domain. However, what I can say is that the Garda Commissioner has advised me that there is an ongoing Garda operation in Limerick aimed at the activities of a certain group and that it would not be helpful for me to make any public comment on it and, in particular, on a specific case.

I thank the Deputy for his full support for the efforts of the Garda Síochána in counteracting the threat that these groups pose and he will appreciate that it would not be helpful to those efforts to go into the detail of Garda operational matters across the floor of this House. Indeed, it would be gracious of the Deputy to acknowledge, as he did at the start of his speech, the extraordinary success of the Garda in these areas and to acknowledge and accept that it has the operational capacity and capability to address these issues with the utmost efficiency.

The Garda remains very active in its efforts to counteract these paramilitary gangs. It continues to monitor them closely and to bear down on all of their criminal activities. A number of recent arrests, charges and convictions in respect of subversive activity are testament to the work of the Garda in combating the activities of these terrorist gangs, and the force is to be congratulated for its continued efforts in this regard.

I have made the point in this House previously - it bears repeating - that to refer to these gangs as some people do as "dissident republicans" affords them an historical respectability that they do not and cannot merit. The fact is these groups are no more than groups of criminals who masquerade as republicans to seek to legitimise their inherent criminality. These are simply criminal terrorists and I do not believe the words "dissident" or "republican" should be associated with them. These gangs are inextricably involved in organised crime, as Deputy Niall Collins said - drug smuggling, fuel laundering, extortion and armed robbery - and there is nothing "republican" whatsoever about organised crime.

I would say also that we all should exercise a degree of caution in discussing these gangs of criminals. They crave publicity and they court notoriety in order to present the appearance of being more important and worthy than in fact they are. Although we cannot ignore that these criminal terrorists present a real and manifest threat, we should always remember that they are in a very tiny minority on this island. They represent nobody but themselves and their own selfish ends; they offer nothing but a return to the dark days of the past.

Countering the threat from terrorists has been always a priority for the Garda Síochána. Nothing has changed in that regard. It should not be suggested that anything has changed, nor should it be in any way suggested that the Garda lacks the capacity to continue with the very important work it is doing in countering the threat that these groups pose. Despite the positive developments of recent years in the North, the Garda has never let up in its efforts to counteract these groups and will continue to target them. I assure the House that this is the case.

The threat faced on this island from these criminal terrorists is a shared threat and I assure the House that the Garda continues to co-operate seamlessly with the PSNI in actively pursuing them. That co-operation has been instrumental in preventing attacks, in combating criminality and, in particular, in saving lives, and I assure the Deputy and the House that the Government is committed to maintaining that high level of co-operation between the Garda and the PSNI and to providing to the Garda the supports it needs to continue with the extraordinary work in which it is engaged and to ensure that these groups are targeted and, where evidence is available, individuals are brought before the courts and properly prosecuted.

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