Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to talk on this very important motion. It is important for people living in rural areas and perhaps not so rural places, as Deputy MacSharry said in his speech. It is a fact that gardaí were very effective when they lived in the local community. In many instances a house was provided locally for the sergeant to live in. There was one in Kilgarvan until very recent times, and then even that was sold along with the Garda station. Going back even a generation, the gardaí helped people when pressure was on them to save hay or turf. In their time off they helped widows or people like my grandmother, whose husband was disabled, to save turf and even bring out the turf. They accrued an awful lot of local knowledge and valuable information by visiting people, perhaps sick people or whoever else, and having the cup of tea and wandering around from place to place. There was not a thing they did not know or understand about that happened in their parish.

Rural places are now very lonely and desolate at night, however, as a result of the laws that were recently passed here. I am sad to say that some of the parties here abstained on and more of them voted for the Bill in the name of the Minister, Deputy Ross. This has meant that roads from rural places are now desolate from 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and open to criminals, vandals, thieves and robbers. Before if there was a fellow going for the pint or two, he would see something or someone. Now there is no one out because they are afraid to go out. They are like rabbits in a burrow, barely peeping out now and then because they are afraid of being popped, as it were, if they go out. It is a waste of Garda resources.

I challenged the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice and Equality a few weeks ago as to why they were directing the gardaí in this regard. It is across all divisions. That day I asked why people were being checked going to mass. They are being checked coming out of mass now. That is the truth. It has happened. People who have never drunk have been checked and are angry about this. Even mothers going to school with children in the morning are being stopped. People generally are so angry all across my constituency about what has happened. It is unnecessary and wrong.

It has changed rural Ireland forever because they do not have the transport in the morning or at night that there is in urban places such as Dublin. Our Garda chief superintendent, Tom Myers, said there are drugs in every town and village in Kerry. Does that have anything to do with the fact that the Garda stations in Lauragh and Sneem are being closed and there are vast stretches of our coastline along the Kenmare River that are open to the bringing of drugs into our county? Maybe there should be more emphasis on that because it is sad to see mothers and fathers bringing up their children, doing everything they can for them, sending them to college and then too many of them get drugs, which are too easily available. We should and could do more to prohibit and prevent that serious scenario that is taking place.

There is constant fear and concern about the threat of criminal activity emerging as a persistent feature of rural life. There is significant under-reporting of rural crime and growing amounts of farm machinery, diesel and heating oil are being stolen. It is impossible to take care of an oil tank. They are being hit by these people, more often than not, who take the heating oil people so badly need.

The cost of legal aid in the past six or seven years ranged from €49 million to €58 million. It is sad to think that the same villains who get legal aid in one, two or three instances get it if they have 40 instances, and in many cases they do. The Minister of State should examine this and the bail laws for people who commit crime and are out on bail waiting for court hearings who think nothing of carrying out another atrocious crime. The statistics show that they carry out most crimes as they are on bail because they know they will get legal aid. It is no bother to them at all. It is no bother to them to go to jail because they learn how to do worse things when they are in there. Many serial offenders should be locked up and the key thrown away for a long time until they see sense and understand what they have done.

I want to thank those responsible for our community alerts and text alerts. These people do much great work for their communities with the little funding they get. I thank this Government and previous Governments for giving them a bit of funding, however small, because these people do tremendous work. They provide a sense of confidence to the elderly people in rural communities. I know of one elderly man who lives on a long bóithrín and from his kitchen window he can see the minute a car turns into his bóithrín. The minute it does he goes to an outhouse across the way so that he will not be inside the house if they are raiders or intruders because he got caught once. He will wait until he sees through a peephole who has arrived in the yard. If it is someone he does not know he goes out the back door of that outhouse and down the fields behind the bushes. That is not how it should be. The closure of the Garda stations, taking them out of communities, has affected people like this by taking away their confidence.

We will agree that if the incidence of rural crime is increasing, more people are being hit because so many have left rural places and the numbers have declined in many of the places we represent. I am disappointed that the Minister put down an amendment to our motion.

We need to strengthen the trespass laws and the rights of farmers and land owners to protect their property and their person. These trespassers can trespass on land without any prosecution because there is no law to prosecute them. That is not right.

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