Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will go into detail on the legislation later. This is an opportunity to find out what the public wants in the justice system. People want fairness and accountability. They want to be able to trust in the justice and prison system. That is the case at present and it is something we must face up to. Let us consider what happened in recent days. Where is the logic in arresting and transporting two anti-war activists such as Deputies Clare Daly and Mick Wallace to prison and then releasing them within a matter of hours? The system is deeply flawed. We must come up with a system whereby non-violent prisoners or people who have been fined do not clog up the system and waste resources and public money. The opposite is also the case; we cannot have a situation where very violent prisoners are released on bail and peaceful prisoners with no track record of violence are kept in prison. Something is radically wrong in our system.

Something is also radically wrong if somebody stabs a person 13 times and only gets a sentence of eight or nine years. I do not wish to interfere with the justice system but there is something wrong in society when violent assaults do not merit tough punishment and resources are directed at less serious assaults and fines. I raise those issues because they are linked to the prison system. We must address the issue of violent prisoners. Judges must wake up and deal with the problem. There are too many violent prisoners in broader society and they seem to get away very lightly. That is something people find very annoying.

In the context of prison reform, we have a major problem with drugs in prison. That is something society must address. I accept the drugs issue is part of a broader debate. I support some of the recommendations for non-violent and first-time offenders in particular who are found in possession of cannabis. A current problem throughout Dublin city that might also affect other parts of the country is a new strain of cannabis that results in young people becoming very violent and getting involved in serious assaults and stabbings. This strain of cannabis is currently ravaging my constituency and across the north side of Dublin. It is important to consider those issues in the context of a broader debate. One cannot tolerate a situation whereby a dangerous strain of a drug is leading to assaults and local people and gardaí are in fear because people are totally strung out on it. Some people do not seem to live in the real world and must face up to the reality.

I welcome the legislation which specifically deals with St. Patrick’s Institution. The main purpose of the Bill is to facilitate the complete closure of the institution. However, we must also consider the broader issue of how we deal with prisoners and other issues that arise in prisons. Another issue that is often neglected is the significant number of people with intellectual disabilities and mental health issues in prison. People with disabilities or mental health issues must be treated from a medical perspective, regardless of the consequences. In addition, it is important to identify such people earlier and for them to receive the necessary support. There have been many sad cases where people with serious issues were not treated and who were involved in violent assaults. They were then locked up after the damage was done and people were injured following a stabbing or other violent assault. We must focus on that aspect of the situation as well.

In considering those who end up in prison, we must look at dysfunctional families as well. Many blame poverty as a cause for people ending up in prison but that is only one aspect of the debate. Many of those who end up in prison come from very violent, dysfunctional families where children as young as three do not have a hope in hell of getting out of the situation. The problem is not necessarily poverty; it is a lack of love and warmth for them as young children. One cannot expect a four year old child who lives in a very violent, dysfunctional family or is in a house that is fuelled with cocaine, alcohol and violence to go into school every day and be a normal child. We must face that reality. Dysfunctional and bad parenting is a significant cause of much violence. When one visits prisons, as I have done on many occasions, and look into the eyes, for example, of young men in St. Patrick’s Institution, one can see the anger, hurt and damage. That was evident also in the Tipperary case when one looks at the shots of some of those people. We are talking about damaged people. My view is that they were damaged at a very young age. We need to look at that issue. It is a tough one to face because one must be tough with violent crime but one must also take a broader view.

Young people who are abused or damaged in any way must be looked after. We must focus on the issue. I do not wish to sound like a boring, windy liberal but the way to deal with the issue is through early intervention. I have seen it work in many communities throughout this city and I have seen some excellent early intervention projects focusing on dysfunctional families with young children of one, two and three years of age. The children were reached even before they started primary school. That is something the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs should focus on and that is something that should be supported when it comes up at Cabinet level. An excellent campaign that is currently running, called Hands Up for Children, deals with this issue. It is important to put intervention services in place. I have met many young parents and seen the positive results. Research bears out what I say. It is necessary to prove that intervention works. Many groups set up under the auspices of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs are in places which operate on the north side of Dublin. In the past such schemes were funded by people such as Chuck Feeney. Such schemes prove that early intervention works and goes a long way towards preventing people ending up in prison.

One issue that greatly irritates me in the context of the justice system and the prison system is the attitude of a section of society which I call the nanny state brigade, whereby we seem constantly to target the regular person going in and out of work. Perhaps the intention is to hand out soft penalty points or to penalise people with soft fines. This morning the Garda was on duty at 8 a.m. trying to catch out people who were in huge traffic jams struggling into work in the rain and damp. Do senior gardaí not accept the reality that the vast majority of taxpayers obey the law and they do not have to come down on them like a tonne of bricks if someone goes into a bus lane for three minutes to get onto the main lane in order to try to get to work on time? It seems that those are the people who are being hammered all the time. I refer to the good responsible driver who does not want to drink and drive, who leaves his car at home when he goes to his factory staff night out but when he goes into work the following day in his car the Garda target him and people like him.

We should get real when it comes to policing and focus on the issues. That is important. We do not want to end up penalising the law-abiding people who are totally excluded from Irish society and who are constantly hammered. The same is true of taxi drivers who get hit with three penalty points when they drive innocently by a speed detection van at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. at a speed a few kilometres over the speed limit. One taxi driver I met recently had been hit with nine penalty points. The purists can say he should not have been driving at 40 km/h in a 30 km/h zone at 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock in the morning when everybody was in bed. Many taxi drivers are being put off the road by the constant issuing of penalty points detected by those who hide in speed detection vans. We all support road safety but we need to ensure that the penalty points system is not just used to gather money and as a sop to say we had so many prosecutions this year and so many people were awarded so many penalty points. By all means, we should hammer the serious speeders but, for God's sake, we should not be driving people such as van drivers or taxi drivers out of their jobs for the sake of driving 10 km/h or 11 km/h over the speed limit when no motorists are on the road. We need to use discretion and we also need to cop on when it comes to policing because if we do not we will lose the trust and confidence of the public, and the reality is that many members of the public have lost any trust they had in the system.

I might have gone off-message for a while but to return to the subject of prisons, this is a very important Bill. I strongly support it because it facilitates the closing of St. Patrick's Institution. As the explanatory memorandum sets out:

Section 3provides for the repeal of certain enactments relating to St. Patrick's Institution, in particular the remaining provisions that enable the courts to commit offenders under the age of 21 to detention in St Patrick's. The section also contains a transitional provision to ensure the continued lawfulness of the detention of persons previously sentenced to detention under the repealed provisions.

Section 3 is a very important provision relating to young people under the age of 21.

It is also important when discussing the broader issue of justice in this State that we are mindful of people who have come to our State, be they asylum seekers or refugees. Many of them have made a huge contribution but some of them are under pressure because of our justice system. There is a case involving a young man in my constituency, whose neighbours, friends and job mates are trying to stop his deportation. A letter written by a constituent on his behalf, states:

I am trying to stop the deportation of Pravish Howlodhur, originally from Mauritius, out of Ireland in the next 12 weeks.

This young man came to Ireland after leaving school at the age of 18. He has lived in North Dublin for the last 9 years. In fact he has lived all of his adult life in Ireland as he left Mauritius in his late teens. To be returned to a developing world country from the developed world would be quite traumatic for him at the age of 29. His emotional attachment, evolved sense of identify and capacity to cope with civil society is essentially with Irish society and not at this stage of his life with his original island home in the Indian Ocean.

He came originally to study but has been working for some years with ... [the] Dublin Airport Authority and due to what they call the unskilled nature of his work [the] DAA refused to apply for a work permit for him. What job [these days] is unskilled? Large organisations can sometimes have an attitude that seems to be a combination of arrogance and indifference to desperate and powerless individuals in our society. If he got the work permit he could apparently stay longer.

... the campaign on his behalf is based on grounds of human compassion and a demand for ... humane flexibility in the operation of the system.

I am quoting from a letter from a constituent who wrote to me seeking any help or suggestions I could provide to stop this man's inhumane deportation. This is a young man who wants to work in this country. He is to be kicked out of the country because he is unskilled even though he is working with the Dublin Airport Authority. I raise that issue when we are discussing the issue of people and their experience of the justice system. It is important that we focus on this issue.

I welcome the broad thrust of this debate. I note that section 6 contains the transitional provisions to deal with warrants for the committal or remand of persons to St. Patrick's Institution which remain unexecuted on the date St. Patrick's is closed. It is important when we close a system that we have a proper system in place to replace it and that we also deal with the overall issues in regard to the Prison Service.

I am thankful for the opportunity to have contributed to this debate and, overall, I welcome the legislation.

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