Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Minister about Garda overtime. I have been told by gardaí on the beat in Tipperary, in the traffic corps and elsewhere, that overtime is going back by the new time. It is not being spent or used. There is pressure from headquarters to save the overtime. That is a damning indictment.

I stood outside a little man's house near the famed Slievenamon at 12 o'clock yesterday. I knocked on his door to ask him if he would consider voting for me. He was shaking when he came out. He told me he had been robbed seven times in the last three years. He was probably a man of 75 years of age. Is it fair that he has been robbed seven times? That is what is going on in rural Ireland.

The Minister is new enough to the job. Her predecessor would not even attend the Garda conferences. He had disdain for the gardaí. At least that cannot be said of the current Minister, who supports the Garda. We need recruitment. We need to stop the haemorrhage of members through natural retirement. I am not saying we should force them to stay on. As Deputy Stanton suggested, we should ask them do so. If they want to stay on, we should allow them to do so. We need to bring back some of the excellent retired officers who did wonderful service for this State. We should ask them to help and assist in intelligence and in fighting crime.

We are closing our eyes to many other areas. I refer to threats from ISIS and whatever else. No one will tell the Minister that we do not have some of those people in this country, because we have.

I am going to stick to this matter tonight. There is no replacement for community policing. The community garda has the trust of the people. The people trust him. Although we need Garda stations to be open - we have heard the Minister's figures - there is no suggestion that gardaí are sitting in stations twiddling their thumbs. Having said that, I met a garda a year and a half ago when I called on a canvass who told me he was at home feeding his dog because the alternative was to sit in a Garda station with no telephone, no computer and no Garda van. I ask Deputies to imagine that. Should we give bicycles to gardaí to travel around rural Ireland? Individual gardaí sometimes have to cover a quarter of a county in a day. I do not want to say any more about this frightening situation because I would be giving too much information to the criminals. Do we think they do not know? They do. In addition, the technological support that is available to gardaí is outdated and antiquated.

I do not know why the Minister and her colleagues will not tackle the whole legal aid situation. I suspect that the many lawyers and solicitors in this Dáil do not want to tackle their friends. It is a scandal. I have evidence of free legal aid being used and abused, and top-ups being given by criminals to the people who are representing them. Why would they not be able to provide top-ups, given that they are robbing and stealing and getting away with it?

I would like to speak about the revolving door syndrome and the whole repeated bail situation. We have burglars being released on bail while home owners, farmers and small businesspeople are locked in jail for having difficulties in paying their bills. That is some indictment of this Government, which passed the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2013 - I call it the eviction Act - to give sheriffs, the Government and the banks the power to attack people's homes, persecute them and put them into prison. At the same time, the real robbers are repeatedly left out on bail.

I repeat that the justice system needs to be overhauled. We were promised a judicial council Bill, but where is it? We were promised the reform of the Judiciary. We were promised an accountable Judiciary. In some cases, judges who are sitting on repossession cases owe the banks tens of millions. If they do not have vested interests and are not on the side of the banks, whose side are they on? This is a shameful indictment of the Government, which promised reform, new politics and new government.

When judges have been appointed since this Government took office, it has been two for Fine Gael and one for the Labour Party. Two and two is four, and one is five, and how many bags full, Minister? That is what is going on. The Government has been punishing the electorate for keeping it out of government for 14 years. Fianna Fáil was in there for too long and it had all its own cronies. The Government parties wanted to balance that up by getting their cronies in. How are ordinary people going to get justice from the justice system when it is packed with political appointees who sometimes act on a nod and a wink?

We have many fine judges and I salute them, but I do not salute those who will not register their interests. The Government promised to introduce a register of interests for judges so that people would know how much the judges owe to banks. In such circumstances, it would be possible to ask judges who are due to deal with certain cases to step aside. Members of the New Land League have had to stand in jails and courthouses. They forced a judge to run off the bench. They demanded that a stenographer be in court as a witness while they told the court how many millions the judge owed the banks. The judges are supposed to be serving the justice system.

The Minister has a limited amount of time left in this office. I wish her well. I want her to take some action and to support the gardaí. The protection of people in their homes is a basic duty of any Government. The people of Tipperary and every other county should not be terrorised and intimidated. The Minister needs to support the Garda by allowing it to spend its overtime budget, rather than clawing back that money. She should give the force the tools of the trade, such as a modern fleet. She should allow gardaí to be armed, if necessary.

I contacted the Minister by telephone once since she was appointed. She took the call. I rang her to tell her that a receiver had approached a farm in Castledermot in the dead of night with a Garda superintendent and a Garda inspector present. I could name them. The Minister knows who they are. They had been crawling over fields with balaclavas and Alsatian dogs. One would not see it in the Third World. This third force was attacking a farmer, Mr. O'Shea, and his family. It was a disgraceful and despicable act. Gardaí had been on reconnaissance around that farm for ten days in advance. This was at a time when the gardaí in Kildare, which is an area with one of the worst ratios of gardaí to the population, did not have a squad car to respond to crimes. We have a Garda for every 370 people in this country. There are 30 agricultural officials for every farmer. The whole thing is red tape and regulations.

The Minister needs to give the gardaí the power. She should not engage in tokenism by announcing ten times that there will be 500 new recruits. I ask her to give the force the numbers it needs. If she brings white-collar people in to do desk duties, that will allow gardaí to go out to do what is needed. The Minister needs to remove the supports given to receivers as they do their dirty and lucrative business. Given that they are making a fortune, they should be paying for their own people. Gardaí should not be required to oversee cases in the dead of night that involve men crawling along on their bellies with balaclavas. I do not call them men; I call them cowards and scumbags. They were accompanied by unmuzzled Alsatians, which is a crime in itself, as they surrounded a farm and terrorised a family for the benefit of the banks.

Is the Minister is working for the banks and the people who broke this country? We have no bankers in jail. I do not envisage that we will. It is a crying shame that we have no banking legislation. The Minister did not address that either. The Taoiseach and the Minister should hang their heads in shame. As I have said, the most basic human right is the right to have one's home. One's home is one's castle. The Minister has failed to defend people in their homes. She has failed to pass legislation that was handed to her on a plate. She has left it on-----

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