Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

They say in films about the mafia that the fish rots from the head, and I agree with that. There is a strong stench at this stage coming from the Minister's direction. When I stated on television that I believed there was corruption in the Garda Síochána over a year ago, I believed that to be true but I could not in a million years have thought it to be true to the extent that it is turning out to be the case. If the Minister has never seen "Serpico", he should go off and watch it because that is the sort of world into which myself and Deputies Wallace, Clare Daly and Joan Collins have not been put.

A week never goes by but someone calls my office or the office of one of the other Deputies who I mentioned with another dire story about how the caller did not get fair treatment from the minority rogue element in what is becoming a feral police force. One of the common ones is that if one is a single mother, one is a target. It has happened so often and unless we have a whole load of single mothers out there who have Oscar-winning qualities when it comes to acting, breaking down and crying in front of us, and begging us to help them, one would have to believe them. People call stating that relations of theirs were murdered but no-one is following up on it. Initially, one thinks, "Hold on a minute here, this sounds a bit off the wall", but eventually, when one drains oneself by investigating it, one starts to conclude that there is some truth in it. Surely, if there is that level of concern out there, we need oversight of the Garda Síochána. We do not have such oversight. That is not because of the staff who work in GSOC who seem like decent people. It is because they have not been given the powers.

We are mad for talking about suicide in this country. Approximately, once a week we get a call from someone new but every now and then we get a call from someone who states they do not think they can take any more and they are going to kill themselves that evening. We hear that quite a bit and some of them have done it.

The Minister should do something about this because it is sick.

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