Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tá áthas orm labhairt ar an mBille seo agus ar an leasú a bhaineann leis. We have seen many evictions in this country recently. Many of them related to people who genuinely tried to engage. We have all been visited by people at our constituency offices who are doing everything possible to engage with the banks but, unfortunately, the banks are unreasonable and do not seem to remember that the Irish people bailed them out during the crash. They seem to have forgot that. Some of these evictions got out of hand. We saw scenes that were very reminiscent of the era of the Black and Tans, but hopefully we will leave that type of behaviour behind.

The Bill and anything else that will close the loophole in existing legislation is welcome. We have seen groups of thugs - they were nothing less than thugs - adopting a heavy-handed approach, flouting the law showing no respect for anybody. It is welcome that this is now going to be clamped down upon. It took too much time to get to this point. I emphasise that my colleagues, Deputies Mattie McGrath and Michael Collins, and I raised this matter and sounded the alarm. Deputy Mattie McGrath brought forward a Bill relating to this issue many years ago in conjunction with Deputy McGuinness. The legislation before us is coming late in the day, but we welcome any measures to close the loophole that exists.

It is clear there are serious weaknesses within the provisions in the Private Security Services Act 2004. The Bill before us goes some way towards addressing the concerns we highlighted in 2019 and again in 2020, when a Bill similar to this was introduced.

I want to address the experiences of families and ordinary people who were the subject of intimidation and physical violence. The main provision of the Bill relates to the insertion of an additional category and a definition of "enforcement guard" in the list of security services covered by the Private Security Services Act 2004. This provision will require enforcement guards to obtain a licence to operate and ensure that they are subject to training standards and licensing regime operated by the Private Security Authority. That is certainly welcome, but it has come late in the day. We, as politicians should have been on top of this sooner. It should have been dealt with many years ago.

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