Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will be opposing this motion. Let us state it boldly as it is: the war on drugs has failed and the war on gangland criminality via the Special Criminal Court or other repressive legislation has failed. We are just as concerned as the Minister and, in many cases I suspect, more concerned in that some of the Deputies on the left represent some of the poorest and most disadvantaged areas where the problems of drugs and gangland crime are felt most acutely. We do not believe that increasing or retaining very repressive powers for the State - which include eliminating the use of jury trial or extraordinary powers in terms of the right to detain people, to infer guilt and so on, which go beyond the normal process of justice - are justified or effective. They have not been to date and there is no reason and no evidence to suggest they will be in the future.

Mark Kelly of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties rightly described how "some electioneering politicians" were using the Regency attack as a "political football", and that is what is going on. We are all appalled by the gangland killings that we have seen recently and we are all acutely concerned for the communities, the families, the areas and so on that are affected by these problems and terrified by them and by the deeper, underlying problems of drug addiction, disadvantage, deprivation and so on that fuel this kind of gangland activity. However, none of this will deal with the problem. It has not in the past and there has been no serious evidence provided by the Government, even though it supports the retention of these powers, that it has done so because no such evidence exists. If we are serious, therefore, and if we are going to move beyond political posturing or, as Mark Kelly said, "electioneering", then we need to recognise that a radical departure in policy is necessary.

To me it is blindingly obvious. The Mafia in the United States was created by the prohibition of alcohol. The Mafia came from the misguided belief that prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol would eradicate it, and it did not. Instead it produced a massive criminal network which continues to dog the United States to the present day, and eventually in the United States they realised prohibition was not the way forward. That does not mean advocating excessive alcohol use or believing alcohol is a wonderful thing or not recognising that alcohol addiction and all the problems that come from it are a major problem. However, there was a final recognition that trying to ban it did not work and made the problem worse, and that is exactly the situation with drugs. There is no question about it. I am not even sure if hippies believe that drug use is a great thing. Nobody believes that. Trying to ban it, however, and driving it underground and into criminal networks has failed and has produced a worse problem in terms of the criminal networks that it has spawned and the gangland violence that is associated with it, so we need a bit of political courage and political honesty to say we need to move away from that failed policy.

Similarly, the only argument that is put forward for the Special Criminal Court is the intimidation of juries, and that is a serious issue.

Across the world, there are plenty of examples of how we can retain jury courts, which are a hallmark and benchmark of the most advanced form of justice we have. To disregard it is very dangerous while there are other ways to retain jury courts which can safeguard the safety of juries. This is the road we must take and it is why we oppose the motion.

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