James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone who made a contribution to the debate on this Bill. As Deputies will have noted, the Bill is limited in scope and is designed to rectify the constitutional infirmity identified by the Supreme Court with regard to repealing second or subsequent mandatory sentences, mainly in the area of firearms and misuse of drugs.

As I noted in my introductory remarks, the Supreme Court ruling does not affect provisions in the statute which provide for presumptive minimum sentences where there is judicial discretion and the issue is not addressed by the Bill.

I have listened closely to the contributions and wish to address some of them. Before I get into those, as Minister of State with responsibility for justice, I cannot let Deputy Mattie McGrath’s remarks earlier go without comment. The drawing of a moral equivalence between the actions of Nazi Germany and those of An Garda Síochána is simply outrageous. The Garda Síochána is an unarmed police force that acts in the spirit of community policing. The Nazi Germany regime exterminated 6 million Jews. It exterminated people because they were gay. It exterminated Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies and political prisoners because of their political ideas. It is not just an insult to An Garda Síochána. Unfortunately, there is a trend across Europe at the moment with certain political people and groups to trivialise genocide and what happened during the Holocaust. That is also part of the consequences of the Deputy's statement. I believe Deputy Mattie McGrath is a good person and I do not think that was his intention. I ask him to reflect on his comments, however. I ask him again to withdraw them.

Several themes came out during the debate today, of which community safety, tackling serious crime and resources were probably the key ideas. I remind Deputies that the mission of An Garda Síochána is about keeping people safe. It is a simple but clear message. For me, that is about people being and feeling safe in their communities. To achieve that sense goes much wider than An Garda Síochána and requires a joint approach right across our communities. That was recognised by the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland. It involves preventative and rehabilitation actions, as well as enforcement. It involves mental health, education, housing, and tackling poverty is a crucial part in this regard, as well as the built environment. It is reflected in the key principle of the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future to build stronger and safer communities.

The Government's implementation plan for the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, A Policing Service for the Future, is strongly focused on people's need to see an increase of visibility of An Garda Síochána on the streets and an increase in local engagement.

Community engagement is a defining feature of An Garda Síochána. We have seen that in action during the period of Covid-19. I thank An Garda Síochána at all ranks for its efforts above and beyond the call of duty over the last 14 months in dealing with Covid-19 and ensuring the vulnerable people in our communities are protected and looked out for.

We want structures to ensure the community element is retained and strengthened. That is why we published the general scheme of the landmark policing, security and community safety Bill, which was developed on the basis of the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland. It recognised that community safety requires all of State services to work together with local communities to make our communities safer. It is a whole-of-government responsibility.

Key measures include placing statutory obligations on the Department and public service bodies to co-operate with one another to deliver safer communities, establishing national structures to ensure collaboration is working and establishing local community safety partnerships to develop tailored local safety plans.

Three community safety partnerships are already up and running in north inner city Dublin and counties Longford and Waterford. These will be rolled out across the country. Operation Faoiseamh has been in operation during Covid-19, with enhanced and proactive supports to victims of domestic violence. Unfortunately, during the period of Covid-19, we have seen a significant increase in occurrences of domestic violence. The Still Here campaign is ongoing and stillhere.ieis an important website for anybody looking for supports.

My Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, which was published a couple of weeks ago, has fundamental policies of widening out engagement with young people who come into contact with the justice system and brings in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, as well as other Departments. I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, for his support. It is about ensuring that we can engage with young people who are coming in contact with the criminal justice system, and even before they do so. We have consistently seen through the research that when young people get involved in criminal activity, very often, behind that is personal trauma such as mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction within the family or they come from minority groups or are early school-leavers. We need to engage on an early basis and divert those young people and children away from a life of crime into a more positive life they themselves will want.

We also introduced the antisocial behaviour forum, which recently brought out policy on tackling the scourge of scrambler motorbikes. However, we also engage with those young people who have a genuine interest in motorbikes to then get them into using their activities in a more positive way. I have also re-instigated the rural safety forum in order that we can come up with policies and ideas on addressing the issues around rural crime.

All this work is being supported with unprecedented resources, with €1.952 billion being given to An Garda Síochána in budget 2021. We now have 14,600 members of the Garda with provision for further recruitment later this year. It is all about a vision for community safety. Our vision is ambitious but we are seeing significant steps being taken on that between myself and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, who has done an extremely good job in driving forward the implementations of policies.

The Bill at hand is very important. The irony does not escape me that one or two Deputies came in here and did not even mention the Bill in their debates, but instead used it as a soapbox when the Bill itself seeks to change an error in a previous Bill that was found to be unconstitutional. Perhaps, if those Deputies spent a little bit more time scrutinising Bills instead of using the Dáil purely as a soapbox, we might not end up in these situations to begin with. It is a sacred duty of any legislator to actually scrutinise legislation. I commend the Bill to the House.

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