Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My thoughts and prayers, like others, are with all who were hurt last Thursday. There has been many commentaries as to who carried out the scandalous carry-on last Thursday night. Some Labour Party TDs, who dream that they know it all, have been inciting all sorts of people inside here in the Dáil. This surely needs controlling and will be dealt with by us. Everyone knows, however, where the Labour Party is going in this country.

There have also been comments from the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, who almost immediately said that it was the far right who were responsible for this carry on. He is totally wrong. The people who carried out this behaviour are lying idle and waiting for some event which they can latch onto in order to start trouble. They are not far right or far left but are people who do little or nothing, cause all kinds of criminality, and get away with it. During the last protest outside of the Dáil, when people were screaming all kinds of abuse and forcing gardaí to make arrests, which they did, two people arrested ended up in court. An Garda wanted these people to be kept in overnight and it asked the judge that at least they would not be allowed back to the street where they caused a problem. Not alone were they released but they were entitled to go back to the street where they had caused the problem. Our laws are too lenient. We are not sentencing these people who are committing serious crimes and are simply getting away with it.

I wish that the Minister was more honest in her approach. She continuously says to us that all is okay in our capital. Then she backtracks and backtracks but she consistently says Dublin is okay. Let me tell the Minister that, sadly, it is not. Her credibility is in tatters over this. She simply has to be honest and to see it the way everybody sees it.

As close as I am to Dublin, three days a week, I seldom go downtown, but on three occasions in the past 12 months I did. If anybody every watched the film, "The Walking Dead", it was nothing short of that. It was absolutely appalling and frightening. I was collecting a young person under 18 years of age and, to be honest, it was not safe to be there during the night. We have a very serious situation and it is not just in the past week or two. This has happened over a lengthy period of time and perhaps even before the Minister took office and we are not touching it but, instead, we are using gardaí from rural areas to deal with it.

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