Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is the respect he has for this House. It was a load of bloody nonsense. If Ministers can schedule three days to make congratulatory speeches, they can listen to the responses from the Opposition following their nonsense speeches.

There are three Ministers in the Department of Justice and Equality, but not one of them is here to engage with us. It is an absolute farce. However, I will use my eight minutes to rebut the rubbish we heard yet again from the Minister for Justice and Equality today.

Let us talk about immigration. I could not believe he mentioned immigration when we have the shameful direct provision centres in the State in which people from various cultures throughout the world are locked up for years, as if they were convicts, because of our archaic asylum system and must also eat food which is not applicable to their cultures. The Minister had the audacity to even mention it in his self-congratulatory speech.

There was also the issue of judicial appointments.

It has reached the stage at which the judges themselves, through the Judicial Appointments Review Committee, led by the Chief Justice, Ms Susan Denham, have said the political appointments system has to end. That committee has recommended that the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board draw up a short list of three candidates, with the Government choosing a judge and publishing the reasons for its choice. That is in keeping with various Bills prepared by Deputies Niall Collins and Shane Ross and me. A range of Opposition Deputies have tried to have this issue addressed but the Minister has kicked it to touch again with another review. This is nonsense and I cannot believe he had the audacity to include it in his speech.

The Minister also referred to the Legal Services Regulation Bill. What a brass neck he has. That Bill has dragged on for three years and the main agenda of the Minister is to bring in multidisciplinary practices or one-stop shops for big business. Such practices are excluded in almost every other European country and are clearly not seen as the way to go, but our Minister wants to bring them in here. Whose agenda is being served here? The main issue of concern to Joe and Josephine Public is the cost when one tries to get justice in the State. When one goes to a solicitor and tries to get justice, it costs one a fortune. Even family law cases and civil court cases cost a fortune. Is that issue, the most important one, being dealt with in the Bill? Absolutely not. The Bill has been dragging on for three years and the whole thing is a nonsense.

Deputy Niall Collins was spot on in what he said earlier. We often give the Minister credit for being a hard worker and for bringing forward progressive and reforming legislation, but that is what a Minister for Justice and Equality does. The Minister is in charge of the law and the law has to change. Things happen, issues are on the agenda for many years and whoever is the Minister for Justice and Equality can rightly claim to be reforming because that is his or her bloody job. The Minister has introduced some legislation with which we agree and that is fair enough. However, there is a list of really important issues that he has not addressed, including white-collar crime. People are rightly furious that those who presided over the disaster that saw our State bankrupted - namely, big bankers, greedy developers and many others who screwed the State and the people - have not been brought to account. Where is the legislation to deal with that? Where is the promised legislation that would deal with that issue effectively and would send a clear message to the public that white collar crime will be punished? The Minister has no problem locking people up for not paying their bills, putting people behind bars for not paying for their television licences or incarcerating people who come from the wrong side of the street, who have never had a chance in life. When it comes to the big knobs, however, the ones whom the Minister wines and dines with, who flatter him and who have backed him up over the years, it seems that they cannot be brought to justice. These are the things that matter to people. These are the things I would like to have seen in the speech from the Minister rather than listening to something more suited to the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis.

The next issue is equality and social protection. This blows me away. The programme for Government states the following: "This Government is committed to tackling Ireland's economic crisis in a way that is fair, balanced, and which recognises the need for social solidarity". While that sounds lovely, it is clearly not the case. Last year my party and others introduced the Equal Status (Amendment) Bill which sought to amend the existing legislation to provide for equality-proofing of Government policies and budgets and of public bodies through equality impact assessments. Had that Bill been accepted and passed, it would have ensured Governments and public bodies exercised their functions in a way that was designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome that result from socioeconomic disadvantage. This Government came into office on a wave of promises in 2011, but soon afterwards it became apparent that many of its plans involved taking from some of the most vulnerable. The Government rejected the Equal Status (Amendment) Bill even though it was Labour Party policy, agreed by its own members. The Bill was rejected, and two nights in a row the Government sent in Ministers from the Labour Party - not from Fine Gael - to rebut legislation that would have taken away the reliance on election promises, as famously referred to by Deputy Pat Rabbitte, and actually made sure budgets were drawn up on the basis of equality impact assessments. The Government did not want to know when it came to the crunch.

The vindication of victims' rights was another aspiration of the 2011 document, but we learned today during the Order of Business that there is no date for that legislation; it is not going to happen. We arrive now at the most profound failure - policing. If one listens to the Minister, Deputy Shatter, and to his pal the Garda Commissioner, one hears terms such as "modernisation" and claims that we have had tremendous success in combating crime. Everything is hunky-dory now because we have modernisation. We have "smart" policing now, where we had stupid policing in the past. It is "smart" today; we are really smart. How did the Minister do this? He cut Garda numbers by 10% across the State, he closed 140 Garda stations, he did not replace Garda vehicles and he amalgamated rural Garda districts. If one asks any garda, whether at the front gate of Leinster House or in one's constituency, in a supermarket or at a football match, what is his or her view of the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Garda Commissioner - who has sadly become his mouthpiece in defending the cutbacks - one finds a sheer lack of confidence in them and often one finds anger. Gardaí are angry that the Minister and the Commissioner are incapable of doing the job they have been asked to do. We have a situation whereby every time Opposition Members speak about An Garda Síochána, they are accused of being anti-Garda. Deputies Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, in particular, get that all the time. It is claimed that they are against the Garda and hate them, which is nonsense. Everything they have proposed, with proposals from me and Deputy Niall Collins, would actually strengthen the Garda, boost morale and restore public confidence.

We have seen various debacles recently, including the controversy surrounding the Garda confidential recipient, allegations that the offices of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission were bugged, the penalty points fiasco and the profound issue of the treatment of Garda whistleblowers. All of these matters have hugely undermined public confidence in the administration of justice. Deputy Alan Shatter's presiding over all of that has been a disaster. The Minister should have resigned by now, or he should have been kicked out by the Labour Party, but for whatever reason, the party does not want to do that. We had to sit and listen to the Minister treating us with utter contempt last week, refusing to answer question after question. He delivered his self-congratulatory Fine Gael Ard-Fheis speech here today and then scooted off out the door so that he would not have to listen to the rebuttals. The Minister may think it is okay to walk out of this Chamber today and to treat us with contempt, but it is not going to work. We are not going to go away. We are going to continue to try to make An Garda Síochána a stronger organisation, to provide for stronger oversight and to restore full public confidence in the crucial organs of our democracy and the administration of justice. We will keep doing our job and keep challenging the Minister. As long as he is in his role, he must face the reality that we will not hide away or back down. We are going to do our job to the best of our ability.

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