Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputies Martin Kenny and Ó Laoghaire for bringing forward this very badly needed legislation. I wish the Minister of State well in his new role as this may be the first time I have addressed him in this House. The Minister of State and I are aware of the case of the Hendrick family in Kilkenny, who are friends of the Minister of State and his father. They were treated in an appalling way a number of years ago.

Deputies Nolan, Michael Collins and myself met the CEO of the PSA, Paul Scanlon, in Leinster House. That meeting happened as a result of what happened on the roadside in Kilkenny and as a result of what happened to the White family under the famed Slievenamon in Charles Kickham country in Tipperary when thugs arrived in the middle of the night, broke into the property, caused untold damage and took away machinery. They were thugs and there was a Garda car sitting at the gate of the house while this was going on. This would not happen in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe and that is exactly what it was.

We saw what happened in Roscommon. I am not going into the wrongs or rights of it but I am going into the fact that we have mercenaries coming from outside the State from Northern Ireland. Some are former SAS people and some come from foreign countries. They are well trained with wearing masks for Covid-19 because they are well used to wearing thick balaclavas. One would only barely see their eyes. They also wear gloves with knuckle dusters. I mention the equipment they had in the context of the injuries they inflicted on a member of the Hendrick family that night. They nearly kicked him to death and I am sure Deputy Howlin is aware of this too. Thank God he is a grown young man but his life was nearly lost with the kicking he got. His lungs could have been punctured when his ribs were broken. They pulled him off the tractor just because he was trying to take a photo of them while driving his father's tractor down a country road. It was barbaric. He waited two hours for a Garda car to come. That happened under the law because there is no law to deal with it.

I wish the Minister of State well and I hope he embraces this legislation and deals with this issue. We met the CEO of the PSA, Mr. Paul Scanlon, to give voice to our serious concerns about the capacity of the State to sanction unlicensed security personnel effectively. Our group organised that meeting to try to address the apparent lack of sanctions for those who engage in aggressive acts of intimidation while purporting to be linked to licensed security agencies. We saw in Roscommon case that some of the people who took part in that barbaric act dragged a poor man out of the house by the ear for everyone to see. They were fined heavily for that but that was all they got. It was a slap on the wrists. Heavy fines mean nothing to them because they are after blood money. They get massive money to do the dirty work for the banks.

Evictions have massive connotations in this country. That is why the New Land League was formed. The president of that organisation, Jerry Beades, attended that meeting with us. We had a further meeting in the PSA's headquarters in Tipperary but the legislation has not been enacted. As I said, that meeting was organised as part of the wider issue of having all of the stakeholders, including homeowners and property owners, consulted. Many of those people have received little protection from the courts because many of them had to go in as lay litigants. I was there with some of them in some cases. I was there for one case when a lady was brought from Cork in a prison van. She was traumatised and she could not stand up. She was screamed at to stand up by the judge but she was physically unable to do so, nor was she able to speak up either with the trauma of what was going on.

In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government went off with a paragraph or two in health legislation to remove the hearsay clause to allow these vultures to hire these criminals. That is what they are. Many of them have criminal records.

We saw what happened in Balbriggan. The Minister of State referred to that himself. The people involved that day parked their vehicles in the Garda station, and that is well known. It is time that some kind of order was brought to this situation.

Overall, we had very constructive engagement with the Private Security Authority in Tipperary and it is doing its best. Significant details regarding acts of violence carried out by rogue operators, and indeed some licensed operators, were put to the CEO of the PSA. We then found out that the board of the PSA, which needs reform as well, contains representatives who were appointed by a Garda assistant commissioner, the former Minister for Education and Skills and the former Minister for Justice and Equality. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that the previous Government was unaware of these problems. If it was, then is the PSA like more boards and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations, quangos, in that it was not doing its job? The PSA is not doing what it is there for. We have boards, more boards and quangos, but are they doing their jobs?

I look forward to this legislation being embraced by the Government. I will be maintaining a vigilant watch to ensure that it does. I refer to the merciless receivership that is going to happen in this country in 2021 because of the removal of the hearsay clause and any protections for homeowners. These thugs are waiting for what is going to be unleashed. They need to be reined in.

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