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

I support Deputy Howlin's amendment. However, I have a concern with it as well in that he says it would be up to the publican to demand a court hearing. Why is the venom all being directed to the publican? For all other citizens, the Garda issues a summons and prosecutes. That is the form the law takes with every other offence. I do not see why it should be up to the publican to go to the expense of calling or demanding a court hearing. If the crime were so serious, then it should be up to gardaí, the superintendent or the Minister, who is demanding that these new laws be put in place, to organise the court hearing and give the publican or whoever it is a fair chance. They may not have the "whereas", by which I mean by the publicans may not have the money or funding to organise or get a court sitting or hearing. It is all unclear.

This legislation is totally unnecessary and draconian. What is going on here is absolutely ridiculous. It amounts to trying to suggest that publicans are guilty before we have any rules or regulations for them. I have been getting cross since I heard from Deputy Bruton earlier in the day that it was up to the publicans to come forward with rules or regulations so that they may open their pubs. Can those in Fine Gael, the party that has been in government for the past nine years, not organise the rules and regulations they want to put in place? At this late stage, after being closed for six months, they are suggesting that the publicans should put forward the rules and regulations. Shame on them. They should not be in office at all and it is time for them to get out of it if that is what they are doing to ordinary good living people who have never done anything wrong. In every group or sector in society there are people who do not adhere to the regulations and rules. Yet, by and large, publicans for the past 150 years have abided by every law and regulation. Going back over the decades there was ridiculous legislation by which publicans had to abide. Going back in history, if a person was more than three miles from a pub, he could get a drink, whereas the person who was one and a half miles away could not get a drink. There were ridiculous things like that.

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