Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed the Government has decided to turn over the Dáil this week to host a backslappers convention for itself. It is quite embarrassing. I would have thought Fine Gael had enough of that at the weekend but clearly the Labour Party felt a bit left out. Many people in Irish society would like to slap members of the Government but I am not sure it would be on the back. If I were in government I would be hanging my head in shame at the litany of broken promises it has stood over. None is more apparent than the appalling treatment of young people. The Government's solution to long-term unemployment is to frogmarch people into the Gateway scheme of working for nothing for the local authorities. The 3,000 local authority jobs axed in the past year will be replaced with young people or other long-term unemployed people working for nothing. What future does this hold for people?

The Government has relied overly on the private sector and the fruit of its labour is the number of companies which have closed down in recent years. Long-standing good-quality jobs have been eliminated from the economy. The idea the Government would compound this by undermining the public sector is absolute lunacy. Opportunities which were there for people when they left school to take up a secure, permanent pensionable job at the local authority are being eliminated and replaced by what is, in essence, a chain gang. This at the same time as we have, in Ireland, the highest profits being earned in any location in the EU but the lowest level of investment. The only investment happening in this country is buying up distressed properties for knockdown prices. Unless the Government addresses this and deals with the issue through a public investment programme we will not see an end to dealing with the issue of unemployment.

There are many issues and we have little time to grapple with them. We could be here all day. Fine Gael could not care less about the flights at Shannon Airport, but the Labour Party in government has stood over a 79-year-old woman spending her second month in jail for having the audacity to highlight how Shannon Airport was being utilised by the US military machine. The State refuses to examine a single aircraft there.

The democratic revolution and the new era of transparency and accountability which the Government promised us has been absolutely and utterly exposed. We could be here all day pointing out examples but I will give several in the limited time available. How we treat individuals and the most vulnerable in society is usually a pretty good measure of whether we have things the right way around. Particularly from the point of view of the Labour Party, which made a virtue in opposition of being better and more humanitarian and liberal, the record of the Government is a particular affront.

At the weekend the Taoiseach stated he would not allow anybody in the State to undermine An Garda Síochána. He is a little bit late for this because unfortunately his Minister for Justice and Equality and his Garda Commissioner have done a pretty good job of it already. The Government's handling of the recent Garda controversies has seriously undermined the good gardaí trying to do a decent job. It has undermined the confidence of the public. It has some limited time to address these issues.

Deputy Wallace will expand on some of these points later but I want to highlight some of them. Over the weekend there were revelations in the media about information about Traveller children being put on the PULSE system. I raised this issue with the Minister for Justice and Equality late last year. His answer at the time was pretty much his answer to everything; he stated he asked the Commissioner and was assured by him that An Garda Síochána does not engage in discriminatory ethnic profiling. This is not enough for the Traveller community which has heard allegations that a 16 day old child was put on the criminal intelligence system with a separate number. I am sure the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs will be concerned to know whether other Traveller children or adults have been put on the criminal intelligence PULSE system without any reason or alleged criminality. This needs to be investigated.

The Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, and the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, are probably aware of a report into racist incidents in the latter months of last year, which dealt with the real experience of people at the hands of the Garda. During the three-month period just short of 100 racist incidents were reported but only 16 were reported to the Garda. Of those who did report to the Garda their experience was not pleasant, and the original abuse was compounded by the fact their complaints were not addressed properly and by poor levels of communication. Incidents were reported where gardaí told a man his car was probably broken into by Travellers, and gardaí questioning somebody with a Traveller-identified name went into the person's background and ethnic status. These issues have been well documented and the Ministers need to address them.

Unless one is looking after the sections of society that are most discriminated against, one is not looking after anyone else either.

There are a number of other cases on which I wish to touch briefly. The Ministers opposite are aware that last week Deputy Boyd Barrett raised the appalling case of Cynthia Owens and the murder of her young daughter, which occurred a number of years ago, as well as the need for that situation to be investigated. I echo that call today. Again, if one seeks to mark a new dawn in this society, one must address these crimes of the past. Sadly, however, it is not only Cynthia Owens who was abused sexually as a child for a number of years. Sarah Bland experienced a similar trauma in that regard, whereby she was systematically abused and raped by her father in a case that came to international prominence because a number of Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly in particular took up her case. That woman and her mother, who are in Ireland today, have fought a campaign over decades to get justice. She is appalled by the fact that the solicitor in her case, who is now the Minister for Justice and Equality, at that time left her in a position in which her complaints were not listened to and she suffered further abuse for years. These are serious issues and one cannot brush them under the carpet. There simply are too many of them and people need answers in that regard. The last case I will mention is that of Frank Mulcahy, who experienced multiple complaints in respect of various Garda assistant commissioners. In fairness, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, has stated that this man needs justice. The case of this man having his good name impugned by the State must be answered. While I do not have the time to deal with these issues, unless they are addressed, they will not go away.

As the Minister for Health is present in the Chamber, I will make a final point in respect of medical care. Members used to talk about looking after people from the cradle to the grave but the recent crisis in a maternity unit shows people should be looked after before they get to the cradle. The hollowing out of the public service and the removal of experienced staff from the health system has led to unsafe practices in the maternity hospitals and beyond, and there is a need to address the numbers. The Government's proposed GP scheme for children under six is a stunt. It is an insult, which clearly has encountered a severe backlash from GPs. The Minister will be aware of a doctor in our constituency of Dublin North who has recently taken up practice having come from the NHS in Britain. The aforementioned doctor took over this practice from another doctor, who committed suicide with a waiting room full of patients because of the financial and stressful pressures the medical profession is under.

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