Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I was supposed to get 12 minutes in this slot. Deputy Finian McGrath's party colleague, Deputy Shane Ross, will lose out now. I will try to leave him a little bit of time.

Given the fact we are discussing this Bill is indicative that a general election is in the air. It usually goes hand in hand with statements about being tough on crime and so on. This kind of Bill is about creating the illusion of dealing with crime issues rather than actually dealing with them. The sort of slogans like “zero tolerance” jump to mind. It goes without saying that for victims of burglary, it can be a horrific crime, linked to violence. Even when it is not, the invasion of somebody’s privacy and personal space is a horrible thing to happen. It is not the most horrible thing that can happen to anybody, however. There are substantially more serious crimes which we are not addressing in this legislation.

This Bill effectively deals with the issue of bail for people who are, in essence, prolific burglars. It allows for consecutive sentencing to address the short sentences already provided for but also allows for previous convictions to be taken as evidence in determining whether somebody will be granted bail. There is nothing too dramatic about either of those provisions. Why, however, is it being done in this way? Obviously, the Government has stated it intends to reform the overall bail laws more generally. It submitted heads of Bill to deal with this in July this year. However, this legislation is only dealing with one aspect of that. Why are the general provisions around bail not included in this Bill? Why is this one being dealt with separately? This Bill has been moved quickly from publication to being tabled for debate, even though it was published after the overall Bill on bail.

The only answer I can give to that is that this is a stunt, a masquerade to cover up the impact of the closure of rural Garda stations and other cutbacks in policing resources. Even in my own area, chambers of commerce, along with other business and resident associations, are noticing a sharp increase in crime because of the lack of Garda coverage on the ground. The important point is that this legislation is only going to deal with one aspect of crime prevention, namely, burglary and bail while not dealing with the larger problems.

When the Minister published this Bill, one of the reasons given as to why the Government was pushing it was the importance of the home. In itself, that is a bit of an insult to those who do not have a home. They will find it a little bit alarming that the Government has a newfound interest in the home, considering thousands of people are without a home and many children are homeless. If we are serious about dealing with bail, then we should follow the advice of the Irish Penal Reform Trust which is:

The most effective way to improve compliance with bail conditions, particularly where the accused person has a chaotic life and complex personal challenges, lies in the provision of bail supports and services that allow the accused to remain within their community and address offending-related behaviour in a familiar environment.

If we really want to have an impact on criminal behaviour and deal with bail properly, then that is what we would be doing. Burglary is a bad crime and should be dealt with but is not the worst crime.

More than 100 people have been murdered or killed by offenders out on bail for other crimes over the past ten years. This bail Bill will not address that situation. There was the horrendous case of Sylvia Roche Kelly, which came into the public domain. She was murdered by a man out on bail for two other crimes at the time. Gerald Barry was out on bail when he murdered a young Swiss student out walking in Galway in 2007. He was then 29 years old and had been charged with assaulting his girlfriend, awaiting trial. Thomas Murray, a convicted murderer, was allowed back into the community, not by the courts but by the Prison Service. Despite the fact the Garda said this man should not be released into the community because he was a danger, he was released. The day he was released, he murdered his former schoolteacher, Nancy Nolan, who lived in Galway. There was the case of Daniel Martin, a troubled young man with a propensity to violence, who himself, while awaiting trial, asked for his bail to be revoked because he could not deal with anger issues. These are real challenges to our bail system that this Government had an opportunity to debate today but chose to ignore. Instead, it is looking for nice, juicy, sexy headline that it is somehow dealing with burglars when in reality it is cutting resources to deal with crime.

If we were serious about dealing with the victims of crime and criminal behaviour, why are we not dealing with the bail scenario that resulted in the horrific death in 2011 of Shane O’Farrell, a case with which the Minister is well familiar? Shane was killed by a Lithuanian national, Zigimantas Gridzuiska, a man who had 40 previous convictions in three different jurisdictions and was out on bail. He was supposed to be signing on in a Garda station daily but no one even noticed that he was not.

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