Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is the Merrion Street way. The notion of hypothecated taxes, as they call them, is anathema to them. When I was Minister for the Environment 20 years ago I wanted to ring-fence a particular income source for local government. I had to do a side deal with former Deputy Ruairí Quinn and bring it directly to the Cabinet without going through consultation, given that bureaucracy would have killed it off. I am sure things have improved immeasurably since then. I understand it, having been in a Department for the past five years. One cannot have a situation in which taxes are ring-fenced. While the plastic bag tax worked and is used for environmental purposes, it is a small sum of money. If we had ring-fenced taxes all over the shop, we would not be able to do joined-up government.

However, in this instance, there is a very coherent and cogent reason to allow it to happen. I would return to the colleagues in both Departments housed in Merrion Street and tell them there is a consensus view in the House. When the most vulnerable communities see criminals being stripped of their ill-gotten gains, if there were a direct benefit to them from it in education funds, better social provision, better play facilities or whatever, it would be a double merit.

It may be true that areas with severe social and economic deprivation generate more crime, at least the sort of crime that attracts most public attention. We do not always draw attention to the white-collar crime that exists in some suburbs, which we do not notice as readily. It is also true that people living in the most deprived areas are also the people most likely to be the victims of crime. Drug crime, alcohol abuse, public order offences and anti-social behaviour make life misery for many citizens living in all our areas, but particularly the areas that are least well-equipped to respond effectively to such offences. I have said here before there is insufficient appreciation at political or senior Garda level of the corrosive effect on communities besieged by anti-social behaviour. The last time I was an Opposition spokesperson on justice I tried to focus on it. In many ways, anti-social behaviour impacts more on people's quality of life than any other criminal activity. Our most marginalised communities have particularly suffered in their quality of life due to lawlessness, vandalism and anti-social behaviour.

Confronted with the true scale of the problems which face communities, the temptation is to blame others or reach for a quick fix solution. However, it is not just an issue of bail, sentencing or the need for ever more criminal laws. Practitioners tell us we have enough law; the way to reduce crime is by enforcement of law and looking beyond the law for the other supports the communities need. We need to tackle the phenomenon of criminal, anti-social and anti-community activity directly and on the ground. Dedicating resources to it from CAB resources would be a good start.

What we are experiencing is, to a large extent, a consequence of decades of underinvestment in or neglect of some of our areas. As I have done previously, I confess my own part in this. During the past five years, we did not do enough for vulnerable areas. While we need a legislative response - this is what the Bill is - we need more, and that is why I raised the issue of the north inner city task force with the Tánaiste on the Order of Business this morning. I hope it is up and running before the end of the Dáil term.

At least equally importantly, we need a policing response that is drawn up in co-operation and agreement with the communities whose neighbourhoods so badly need effective policing. The relationship between the Garda Síochána and some local communities is not good, as the Tánaiste will acknowledge.

In some areas it is deteriorating. We need to rebuild confidence in the relationship between police and community. We need to establish community structures, with a degree of control over Garda policy at community level. In short, we need to reconnect policing with communities. That is simple to say and challenging to do. We have - we all have met them - excellent members of An Garda Síochána, both at junior and more senior level, who understand what needs to be done in that regard.

An important aspect of the policing response is to ensure that the policing service is modernised in terms of technology, operation and management. The Tánaiste will be aware of my views on these matters. Are the Garda Inspectorate reports being implemented? I hope they are. Is there still a commitment to act on the myriad of recommendations that we discussed over recent months?

Will we, to take the most relevant example, see the establishment of a Garda serious and organised crime unit to tackle criminal networks? We need to see it happening. The Garda Inspectorate describes this as providing an agile multi-disciplined investigation team to follow the criminal, not just the crime type. They complained in an earlier report that there was very little clarity about what some of the national units do and do not investigate. They said that there was too much duplication and not enough clarity. They say that there were opportunities to amalgamate functions and units to create clearer protocols about what crimes each unit is tasked to investigate and they say that the formation of a serious and organised crime unit would allow several current units to come together, reduce overlap and provide more resilience for the long-term investigations required in some instances. Perhaps the Tánaiste, in her reply, can tell us if this repeated recommendation has been accepted and when will we see this unit established.

We are all agreed we need a socioeconomic response. We talked about that in this House. There is much anger, frustration and annoyance at community level and not only in the north inner city. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien would instance parts of his own constituency and we all could different parts of the country. Alongside that anger, there is a willingness to be involved in resolution. People have enormous energy. They want their communities, their streets, their parks and their cities and towns to function and to underpin rather than diminish the quality of life of their own people.

This enormous resource must be included in both framing and delivering solutions, such as those underway in the north inner city. That is why I place so much emphasis on the task force that I pursued, initially with the Taoiseach and, up to today, with the Tánaiste, and it is against that backdrop that I invite the Tánaiste to reconsider and go back and fight, as I know the Tánaiste can do effectively, with the Minister for Finance and whoever else the notion of ring-fencing the proceeds of crime to be demonstrably used to tackle deprivation. Crime has heaped further affliction on already blighted areas. It would be a visible sign of good intent and a practical commitment if the accumulated proceeds of crime could be used to physically reinvest in communities.

My colleague, Senator Bacik, proposed in the other House another amendment to this Bill on our party's behalf. It is slightly convoluted since it sought to reference a change in the law which is well signalled but which has not yet been made. It is trying to be prescient. At present, soliciting in a public place, either by a client or by a prostitute, is unlawful but the act of buying or selling sex is not unlawful. The published proposal that I understand the Government is proceeding with is that in future, the purchase of sex will be unlawful but the sale of sex will not, but criminalising the purchase of sexual services has one peculiar consequence that, perhaps, has not been thought about. The purchase money will become the proceeds of crime, the crime committed by the purchaser under this new offence because we will make it an offence to purchase sexual favours. It will be caught because the proceeds of crime is defined under the legislation that we are amending today as meaning any property obtained or received by or as a result of or in connection with the commission of an offence. The payment for sexual services will be received by the prostitute as a result of an offence committed by the client.

It seems that this new reality has produced a somewhat schizophrenic response on behalf of the authorities. There is an agreement across the House that many prostitutes are victims of exploitation and criminalising these women is wrong. The alternative approach, of criminalising the clients while ensuring that women selling sexual services are not criminalised, has largely been met with approval. If we have a situation where the money received by prostitutes is now a criminal asset, it can be seized and, while I do not have time to elaborate on it, there have been cases where that has been used in an exploitative way by An Garda Síochána. We need to rethink the matter because, as somebody put it to me, we might be taking women out of the prison cell but putting them into the poor house. That might not be the best response.

I am conscious that my time has expired. We will have a chance on Committee Stage to develop these matters in more detail. I welcome this Bill and look forward to its speedy enactment.

See this speech in context