Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Organised crime is a fact in Ireland and it involves conspiracy generally to commit serious crime. Mostly, it operates on a level of intimidation and enforcement. It preys not only on the weak but also on the strong. We also have disorganised crime in this country. We see that more outside of the major urban centres, maybe, in the form of antisocial behaviour, theft, money laundering, general types of stealing and what have you.

I think it is fair to say that the organised crime in this country is most prominently seen around the drugs trade. Ireland has moved on very much in comparison with other countries in Europe and we have quite a burgeoning hard and soft drugs trade. I think most people involved in social services and some in community services would say that cocaine is now rife around all our cities, with its use also rife among our middle class. As for the reasons people take drugs, I do not have the answers to all that, but one thing I do know is that the drugs trade is all about money, and money is all about coercion.

The addictive nature of drugs is a significant problem. I refer to future discussions of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. The citizens' assembly is very welcome but we need to be mindful that the drugs people speak about nowadays, particularly marijuana, are not the drugs people might have smoked 20 or 30 years ago. They are a far different product. They have been genetically modified to be far more addictive. People in psychological services tell us of significant damage they are seeing, particularly in adolescents who are smoking marijuana. I am not going to prejudge the outcome of the citizens' assembly but we need to have people who have wide and specialist experience in terms of understanding what drugs are and what they are not.

The Garda is the backstop to everything we do in the justice system before people arrive into the courts. I speak to gardaí and know that we have significant resourcing issues. In my own area of Waterford I have brought up a number of times the fact that we have a divisional headquarters in a building that is completely unfit for purpose. It has people crammed into offices where there are four or five of them in a small space. They cannot even bring their bags in with them or hang up their coats. We have a monitoring unit down there that serves all of the south east plus another six counties. It is like looking at a pilot getting into a seat. That is how little space is in there. What does it say to people who are going in to do important jobs in the morning that this is their work space for the next seven or eight hours? I have raised this with the Minister before and he has told me it is a matter for the Commissioner and all the rest. We need investment in that divisional headquarters.

Rural policing is a significant issue and again it is about the lack of numbers. In some rural areas in my constituency they have tried to get community monitoring going. The Minister was in County Waterford recently and met a community monitoring group in Dunhill. He has seen the work they have done. The fact of the matter is that they are short €1,200 to manage their monitoring service every year. That is because of the cost of using group texting. They are having to run around to try to raise that money. They reached out to a number of councillors and others. We need some sort of statute to perform these things. They are absolutely vital to people. I am on that list. I could get a text at any time of the day or night telling me about car registration numbers and people moving suspiciously and all that. It is a great comfort to people in the country. Another thing the Minister is aware of is the targeting of outbuildings and farm buildings using drone technology. People are flying drones over sheds and farms, looking for ATVs, tractors or anything that can be taken. We need to find a way. Technology is moving on and crime will always utilise technology way before the State uses it, unfortunately. We need to get something around that.

The Courts Service has a very difficult job to do and the burden of proof always has to fall such that they consider people innocent before they are found guilty. However, we have a courts carousel going on in this country. We can see it if we read the crime sections of the regional newspapers any week. There are people coming in with multiple previous charges. They are up before the courts and generally speaking they get a non-custodial suspended sentence and are back out again. The gardaí know they are going to be looking at them in a matter of months. It is really difficult for a garda to go through the process of trying to bring these people before the courts and seeing them out the other side. I know there is a separation between the courts and the Oireachtas in terms of powers. However, we have to do something about prison services, rehabilitation services or even some of the community outreach services others have spoken about here. We have some people who can be remediated. We have some people who are on the wrong track and they can be brought onto the right track. We have other people who cannot. To be quite frank, for some of those who are hardened criminals, they need to go away for quite a while. I spoke to someone who was a prison governor here for a number of years. His estimation was that for hardened criminals, if the sentence is less than five years they do not rehabilitate. After five years maybe they do but in less than five years they do not. We need to be looking at sentencing. We need to look for constructive sentencing in the courts. Most of all we need resourcing of our policing. That is really where we can mitigate organised crime. We need an uptick in cybersecurity also because criminals are now going online to do all their business.

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