Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am talking about the appointment of judges. I am talking about the charade that goes on here with the Bills we pass, about the other power struggle that is going on and about this House being diminished. That is what I am talking about, with the indulgence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I will talk about the Courts Bill. I have a lot to say about the courts. As I said, when deals are agreed between parties, each of them gets its own number of judges appointed. The cake is sliced up for appointees and judges. We saw how ferociously and vociferously Shane Ross’s Judicial Appointments Bill was opposed in order to prevent any kind of independent oversight on the Judiciary. There are huge problems.

I will go back to what I said about the Green Party and taxes. Everybody has bought into the situation here. We just put on more carbon tax and more tax. We freeze people out of their homes, literally, in the name of climate change. It is all one mantra. If you dare to challenge it, or if people in positions in Teagasc and other organisations have alternative scientific evidence, they are not even allowed to speak of it or their promotion prospects will be damaged. They have been damaged and threatened. Is that a free democratic country? Is that the country of Liam Lynch, whose death we commemorated last weekend? He gave his life 100 years ago. Is that what he and the other great leaders fought for? I was delighted to see an Teachta Jim O’Callaghan and an Teachta Lahart come down to our commemorations for our great noble leader and the ideals and values he had. I was delighted to listen to the homily given by Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan about the ideas and values of Liam Lynch and his comrades-in-arms, including in Cumann na mBan, and the values they had for Ireland. What would they think of Ireland today? I do not know what they would think of it today. That is for history to write but I do not believe this is the Ireland they would have wanted.

The courts were mentioned here. Deputy Michael Collins raised a point earlier today about the banks. Every one of us has had issues with banks, legal firms and the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, since the so-called bank crash and the subsequent bailout. I said when NAMA was set up that it was like a wild animal released in the woods and nobody knew where it would end up. We have the mess. There are no regulations for these banking entities even though we are big shareholders in some of them. We have no recourse for justice for ordinary people in the courts. When they go to the courts for protection, fairness and fair play, they cannot get it. Some of them are going in as lay litigants - this is no criticism of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle or of Deputy O'Callaghan - because they cannot afford representation. They are shunned, disapproved of and destroyed. Their lives are destroyed.

We have repossessions. We have a third force going around. We have had this debate several times about the security industry as well. They are going around without proper court documents doing evictions and repossessions of homes, without any proper paperwork and with no recourse. The gardaí stand idly by, in many cases. I have supported the Garda all my life and want to support them. We have seen this happen is Balbriggan, in Roscommon and in many parts of the country. People are terrorised and their health fails. They are broke and famished. We see businesses like the one that Deputy Collins mentioned in Clonakilty - a seventh generation business. The current generation is 44 years in the premises but was thrown to the wind with no recourse to justice. When we ask Ministers here about such matters, they tell us that they cannot interfere in the banks. We have regulators galore and court persons who should defend these people. I am not saying they should defend them blindly, but they should give them access to justice. They need some recourse to justice because of contracts being broken, contract law being shredded and torn up. In some cases, the contract they had with the bank went to an entity which sent it to a second entity before it eventually went to somebody else. That could not happen in any democracy and it would not happen here if the relevant sections of our courts and our judicial system were working hand in hand.

I know there is a separation of powers across the river but I am concerned. This is not the first time I have spoken in this vein in the House. I have been down in the courts many times. I had occasion to go there in advance of the last general election when a candidate - God rest her - died suddenly during the election campaign. Our election in Tipperary was going to be postponed. This was a costly and daunting experience for my good self. It was prohibitively costly to ensure we had a free and open election in Tipperary on the same day - ar an lá céanna le gach áit eile sa tír. We had to fight for that. We had to go into the courts. We may have been there only ten minutes but the costs were frightening. I will be honest and tell the truth - those costs are still outstanding. Even though I was acting in good faith and in the public interest, I was hit with costs along with Councillor Joe Hannigan, rather than the public interest being served. It beggared belief that night at midnight when the Government relented and allowed the election to go ahead. The case was left hanging and no costs were awarded to me or to anybody else. I can handle that but I am talking about ordinary people who have no access to the courts.

I am dealing with the case of a woman and her family who were evicted from a house in Wicklow. Thirteen men came into her house in the dark of night with two females in the house, and a Garda car sitting outside on the street. When they approached that Garda car for protection, they were just dismissed. I will not say that they were laughed at. The Acting Chair is familiar with this case. We spoke about it an hour ago. There was no justice. I have been in court in Dún Laoghaire a number of times with that lady. Now the case is put off until 2025. Justice delayed is definitely justice denied. That family had their house repossessed even though there was no proper paperwork. It was contested but nothing can be done about it, and a family is now homeless. We talk every day here about the homeless but we do not mention the homelessness that the State, with our without the judicial system, is presenting and causing. I refer to family farms, family businesses and family homes. There has been a trail of utter destruction in the past ten years, with no accountability. There is no recourse to justice in the courts because it is so prohibitively costly. As well as that, you cannot get in because cases are stacked up and there are delays.

I welcome the appointment of a number of new judges. They are badly needed. As someone said earlier, court clerks and other personnel are also needed because cases are listed. To get discovery of documents now in some courts is nigh impossible. Why is that? It should not be so. You are entitled to discovery. If orders are made for discovery, it should be obtained. Cases are going on. For example, the Circuit Court travels throughout the country and sits three or four times a year in Clonmel and locations in other counties. It has a list of cases as long as this bench waiting to be heard. Some of them will not be heard for ten years. That is farcical. When the prosecution speaks with the barristers who are defending, they might decide that a case is too long and cannot be held in an eight-day sitting because it could take up to 15 or 16 days. I know, because I went through it myself. Bhí mé ann mé féin. You have to wait and wait for five, ten or 15 years. That is not a functioning Judiciary or a functioning democracy. It neither looks like one nor sounds like one. They are the issues, every day of the week. I have huge concerns about what is happening to people who are not being allowed access to justice.

As I said, we are here today in our beloved country. We need to think, look and see where we are going to get a clearer picture of what is happening if we cannot have confidence and faith in our judicial system. We have lost it in our banking system because they betrayed all of us. I voted here for a bank bailout. That was the biggest political mistake I made in my life. I did not vote for the so-called bailout because it was a cleanout. Here we go again. Yesterday we had the merry dance of making an announcement outside while we were debating homeless figures inside. I stood here looking for €2 million to progress a motorway to stop the slaughter on the N24 between Limerick and Waterford. There is a €2 million shortfall in the funding for the consultants to design the road. The Minister for Finance was out brandishing a surplus of €10 billion to €15 billion on behalf of the Department of Finance.

We are going to have imaginary low inflation. I hope it happens, but I have no degrees in maths and still am not foolish enough to fall for this kind of spin. It is all spin and nothing short of spin. That is what is wrong. You dare not challenge it because then you are the worst in the world and you are out of kilter. You are all out of step except my Johnny, so Johnny has to sit down. "Croppies lie down" - the old adage is still there.

We just need to be open-eyed and see where we are going. We need to see the situation regarding inward migration in this country. Before anyone accuses me of wolf-whistling or being racist, I am not. However, we have figures supplied by the Minister for Justice showing 3,000 and 4,000 different times over seven years when migrants came here with no documentation whatsoever. They are being moved around in buses in the dead of night. Are we trying to store up trouble? The Irish people are the people of the céad míle fáilte, of a sense of the meitheal and of welcome and support. Communities have done so much to welcome refugees from the war in Ukraine. Ordinary people have welcomed refugees into their homes and everything else, but now it has become a money racket for big business and the costs are shocking. It is some of the hotels here in Dublin and the centres. They are getting €30 million a year. It is a money racket. It is unfortunate that people need our help and support, but the racket should never be allowed to happen. In one case we have people opening their homes freely and allowing refugees in, and on the other hand we have money from America. I know of agents and men - ordinary people - sourcing houses. They do not have businesses or offices. They are just sourcing accommodation and getting a very handsome cut. They continue to get a percentage of the amount of people accommodated. Is that the Ireland of the welcomes? Is that the Ireland of the support for the small people, the Ireland our forefathers fought for and the Ireland of the ideals they had? I certainly do not think so. We must deal with inward migration. We need to not be just the lapdogs of Europe, running off to the World Economic Forum and taking our orders from other places.

The Teachtaí Dála anseo put together a Government. I will not say it was elected, though its members were elected individually. The Government was formed here with grubby deals and the support of some Independents who besmirch the name "Independent" on many issues. They might as well be Fine Gael-lite or Fianna Fáil-lite. Then that Government takes decisions that are driving our people into penury. We saw it last night, when we could not get more than five Teachtaí to stand up with us as we were pleading for us to cop ourselves on as a State with the carbon tax and not put more perishment and penury on ordinary people. Everybody knows the infrastructure is not there to roll out electric vehicles. I mentioned the child labour and slave labour involved in mining materials to make batteries. It is all a big con, but that will not be spoken about at all. That is over there. That is dirty talk. Let us put that away. We are to have one narrative now, which is green, clean and electric and to hell with dirty fossil fuel and the oil companies that invested such money here and still want to invest in Barryroe. I heard Deputy Naughten earlier talking about investment somewhere in his constituency and what Germany is doing at the moment in disconnecting its nuclear power and becoming nearly fully reliant on fossil fuel. Why have to be so blinkered here and to just bow our heads to anything that is green? We going down a cul-de-sac and then the gate will be closed behind us and we will have no way of coming back.

Our people will not have food with the way our farmers are being treated. When they go to the courts for justice over below-cost selling by the major moguls and supermarkets, they get none because money is power. The power of money says big is beautiful and wonderful, and to hell with small farmers. I met the sheep farmers who were present in the Seanad earlier. They are being wiped out. These people have a clean product that is world-renowned in Irish lamb. I must declare an interest that my own family has produced mountain and hill sheep for generations and hope to continue, in spite of the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and all the NGOs and all the different reports by Teagasc and the citizens' assembly that are attacking and demonising farmers. The citizens' assembly is anseo. This is the citizens' assembly that I, thanks be to God, am privileged to have been elected to, rather than one where everyone is hand-picked and people spill out the narrative and attack and demonise ordinary rural-dwellers and farming families who put us in these places. They must have recourse to the courts for justice, but they have no place to go. We have a security agency based in Tipperary for all these so-called third forces that came in here from the North and countries overseas - I call them mobsters - acting on behalf of the receivers and the sheriffs. It is disgusting. The sheriffs are under the Courts Bill too, but they are totally untouchable.

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