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

It could be somebody calling that would be delighted to see him. We are at the stage now that if there are people outside in the yard making noise, the people inside are afraid and thinking "oh my goodness, who is this?", "who is making that noise outside?"; older and more vulnerable people, in particular, wonder if it is an unwelcome person coming that they are afraid of. When our people get older, they should be given more respect every day by all of us because we adore them. We should be so glad to have them, those we have lost and the people who are left, that we want to hold onto them for as long as possible. We want their time on this earth to be happy, safe and comfortable with no stress or duress, especially at the end of their days.

I want to change the argument a little bit now in that we are not just concentrating 100% on rural areas. What about the people living in our larger towns who, when they lock the door, do not want to hear anybody coming because they are afraid of who is coming? They could be living where there are people to the left and right of them and across the road but they are still afraid because of nasty things that have happened in their localities. This is where the Minister of State and his Government have such a part to play. When people get caught having broken into the homes of or hurt or threatened violence on older people, for God's sake, the punishments are not half enough for that type of crime. I unfortunately can remember one instance where two elderly brothers were held up. The two of them are gone to their eternal reward now. One of them was a bigger man and the other was a smaller man. The bigger man was tied to a chair and the people who went into his house late at night beat him continually until the smaller man was made tell where they had the little couple of pounds saved in their house. Those two people, I am sad to say, never again slept a night inside in their house, their own house where they had grown up from two small boys. They were farming people and they lived all their lives there until they were hunted out of their house by thugs, by the scum of society that unfortunately were never caught for that crime and never spent one hour behind bars for what they did to those two lovely men. It is things like this that upset every person and not just politicians. We have seen it happening where elderly ladies are inside in their houses and where people break in and demand money with menace or steal their goods. That should not be tolerated in the Ireland we are living in today. Whatever about any other type of thing that will happen, where older people are hurt or threatened and when these people are caught we must look at the sentencing and the punishment. There is no dread in these people. It is the same for people who are pushing drugs. There is no deterrent because they are not afraid.

I said it earlier on the Plinth when Deputy Mattie McGrath organised a press conference to highlight what we were doing here today. I thanked them very much and said I did not care whether they were Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, or the Labour Party. I thanked every one of the Deputies who were here after the awful shooting of Veronica Guerin, when every Deputy came in here and threw off their political colours and put their shoulder to the wheel and changed laws immediately. They brought in the Criminal Assets Bureau, one of the most successful and useful tools that we had in tackling organised crime. Unfortunately it is not enough. Drugs are still coming into this country but when we look at the vast coastline that we have and when the very small amount of policing that is put into our coastline it is no wonder the drugs are coming in. I compliment the politicians of that time and the general public that supported them in ensuring that more stringent rules were put in place. A lot of those bully boys were hunted down. For the smart big men with the big swaggers on them when they were going around thinking that they could kill a journalist like that in broad daylight, not far from here, the smile was put on the other side of those little worms' faces when they were hunted down in their big fancy places out in Spain and dragged back and taken before the courts. The dirty little horrible people that they were, they were put into jail and they got a long time. They saw that their assets were stripped and taken from them and sold off to respectable people. The only thing I can say is to hell with them and they may rot in hell along with the others who are after our older people at present because we have no sympathy whatsoever for them.

I thank my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group. The one thing I am disappointed with is that the Government is not supporting the motion in its entirety. Coming along tonight and putting forward an amendment is only messing with it and the Government is not giving it the serious consideration we believe it deserves. We are not coming here tonight in a political or adversarial way. All we are saying is for God's sake, there are a lot of things wrong and we want them to be addressed. We want to work with the Government on this, not against it, but unfortunately it is going against us by bringing forward a counter-motion. As far as I can see it is only doing it for the sake of it.

I compliment the gardaí in County Kerry on the sterling work they are doing with limited resources. It is right to say they are being put on the wrong track because all they are being told now from on high is bag people and to give their time to that instead of to fighting rural crime, which is what we want them to do.

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