Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the publication by the Government of the Private Security Services (Amendment) Bill 2021. It is long overdue. I recognise and acknowledge the work and contribution of Deputy Ó Laoghaire in the initial drafting of the Bill some time ago. I am heartened by the fact there is cross-party support for it. There is good reason for that support. I am happy to say that I will support the passage of the Bill through the Dáil for all of the reasons I will outline. It is something the public wants and needs. The public needs to have confidence in the private security industry. The events a number of years ago in North Frederick Street in Dublin and Strokestown in Roscommon show that it is very important to have a regulated security industry in this country. Those forced and violent evictions should never be allowed recur in this country.

The next reason I am supporting the Bill is because it is something the private security industry itself wants. To be fair to the industry, it operates to quite a high standard in this country. The very last thing it wants is for unlicensed, unidentified, untrained and masked individuals being bussed into this jurisdiction to perform very violent evictions and undermine the reputation of the industry.

Another reason I am supporting the Bill is because it sets up, defines and establishes a new grade and category of security professional, namely, the enforcement guard, and this is a good thing. Once we define the role of a new category or a new grade, we will get to control the role. We can be sure, or at least confident, that anybody getting into this line of work will be properly Garda vetted, will be the subject of background checks and will be properly licensed and trained. The training aspect is very important. It is not just about having the right skill set, it is also about having the right mindset. To be fair, being forcibly evicted from a home or property is devastating for anyone. The day of an eviction is one that people will remember for the rest of their lives. Let us not make it any more difficult than it already is. It is important that if a court order is being enforced, it is done in a very sensitive and professional manner. To be fair, the legislation facilitates this happening.

I am also supporting the Bill because it provides a mechanism for members of the public to make formal complaints to the regulator in the event of misdemeanours or misbehaviour by this new grade of security professional. It also creates the new offence of impersonating an enforcement guard, whereby people who are not licensed, properly trained or regulated pretend to be someone they are not. The appropriate penalties are there from a fines perspective and even from a custodial sentence perspective in extremis.

Forced evictions, or the enforcement of court orders, should absolutely be regarded as a measure of last resort. We should absolutely explore and exhaust every other avenue possible to prevent forced evictions from occurring. It is beyond the scope of the Bill but I am still concerned, as are many Deputies, about the cost of mortgage rates in this country. They are twice the EU average, which is completely unacceptable. There is just not enough competition in the banking sector here. With KBC and Ulster Bank leaving the market, a huge vacuum is being left behind. We need to empower the credit union movement and An Post to fill this vacuum and provide fair mortgages at fair rates.

We should also encourage continental banks to operate here at fair rates. There should be no reason an Irish person cannot get a mortgage from a bank in Germany in respect of an Irish property. The latter happens in other EU countries. There is no reason it should not happen here. We are told there are four freedoms in the European Union. These are freedom of movement, freedom of capital, freedom of goods and freedom of services. It is fortuitous that the EU Commissioner for Financial Services, financial stability and Capital Markets Unionis an Irishwoman, Mairead McGuinness. For the next few years, this is an opportunity we should certainly seize and try to get more competition into the market, reduce the mortgage rates in this country to allow people to stay in their homes and reduce the chances of forced evictions in the first instance.

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