Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

After careful consideration of the track record of this Government in the areas of crime, policing and addressing the root causes of crime, the Labour Party will not be supporting the Government's motion.

We did not rush to political point scoring in the aftermath of 23 November. We were traumatised when the news filtered through of a vicious assault on innocent schoolchildren and their carer. That shock was compounded when we saw images of law and order breaking down in the centre of our beloved city. We did not look for political advantage. We did not join the calls for the Minister or the Commissioner to resign, as our first instinct was to focus on the far right and the depleted and demoralised state of An Garda Síochána. The time for political accountability has now arrived.

It is important in a debate as partisan as this to point to the Minister’s successes. Her advancement of the domestic, sexual and gender based violence agency legislation is to her credit. Her support of Deputy Howlin’s Coco’s Law initiative to criminalise the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, her move to tackle stalking and sexual harassment and her prioritisation of hate crime legislation, are all to her credit. These measures are dismissed by some in this Chamber as culture war issues. Tell that to the parents of cyberbullied suicidal children, to women who have been sexually assaulted, raped or beaten to a pulp in their own homes or to those who live under the constant fear of being attacked for who they are. The Minister has had her successes and we have worked with her to achieve them.

Her failures are not hers alone. They must be shared across Government and the Government needs to take responsibility for them. It is a cross-government failure to properly resource An Garda Síochána to bring its numbers up to a level needed to match the increase in the size of the Irish population and the changing nature of modern policing. It makes no sense that we have a Garda force at the same level it was 20 years ago, with a population which has grown by more than 1 million people in that time. There is a lack of civilianisation in the force. It is 20% here compared with 50% in the UK, leading to more gardaí doing more administration than ever before.

It is a cross-government failure to not tackle the morale, recruitment and retention issue in An Garda Síochána. The statistics do not lie in terms of Garda resignations in 2023. It stands at 142 at the end of October this year. This is five times the number of 2013. The gardaí threatened industrial action in October, which was averted at the last minute. The Minister still insists on policing this city on overtime. The promised 1,000 extra gardaí have not materialised, with only 633 trainees entering Templemore this year and an intake from January being brought forward to Christmas in an apparent attempt to massage the figures. Even in this debate, the Taoiseach has said the number is 800, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, has said the number is 700 and the Garda Commissioner has said the number is 633.

It is a cross-government failure to properly tackle the far right. There has been no myth-busting public information campaign to dispel the lies they are propagating. It appears the Government feels they will wear themselves out, that is, if they close down libraries or burn out tents or riot at the Dáil or block the port tunnel or place blockades on roads or spread misinformation online or protest at accommodation centres, they will eventually get tired. They did not; they just set O'Connell Street on fire. The Minister's failure is threatening the safety of everyone they target. She also has isolated the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, and has given him zero cross-departmental support. Now, at the point when people of colour are feeling most uneasy about wandering the streets in Dublin, the Government has decided it can no longer put a roof over the heads of people seeking international protection. What a colossal failure.

It is a cross-governmental failure to engage in genuine reform of our prison system and drug policy or to properly tackle the causes of social exclusion. Our prison system is vastly overcrowded. In September, the Inspector of Prisons criticised the degrading conditions in some overcrowded prisons. Governors tell me that too many prisoners are there because of addiction issues or mental health challenges. The Minister's response is that we need more prison spaces.

On drug reform she has shown no appetite to grab the historic opportunity offered by the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. Some 6,400 people have been charged with possession for personal use this year alone. This is a complete waste of Garda time but the Minister has shown no vision for change. Disgracefully, she has made no effort to open the medically supervised injection facility, even as a mobile service, because the lives lost to addiction are not a high priority for the Government.

Her rhetoric over the past 12 days gives the Labour Party no confidence that she has a real interest in addressing the root causes of crime. There are young people on the edges, seeking empowerment and respect who are vulnerable to drug gangs or hate movements that know what buttons to press. The Minister has handed them more material by saying things like they need a good, honest beating and to have social welfare deducted from them. She also used the term "scumbags". There not a youth worker in the city who does not think that these comments have all made their jobs more difficult. Would a tax evading farmer, businessman or banker be called a scumbag?

Principals in DEIS schools have begged the Minister to address intergenerational trauma within the most acutely disadvantaged children and she has said she would review it in 2024. The very section of An Garda Síochána that can do the most work in building relationships on the ground, fixing issues before they start, namely, community gardaí, is the area under most strain from the Minister's failures. Housing is still a national disaster with thousands of children in sheltered accommodation. We have one of the highest overdose rates in Europe. Some 23% of Irish workers are in low-paid work.

The Minister has to deal with the issues we have raised. She cannot accuse us of playing politics. She cannot suggest we have acted inappropriately as it was not we who produced photographs of vulnerable individuals in the Dáil Chamber. The Minister cannot shout "Jonathan Dowdall", "IRA" or "Special Criminal Court" at us. She cannot accuse us of playing both sides on immigration in local communities as she knows that is not the Labour Party's way.

The Minister's post-riot announcements about the Policing Authority and Twitter have both been flatly contradicted by those involved. We have no confidence in the Government's management of justice issues in our country. The people of Ireland deserve so much better. They deserve vision, ambition and an agenda with social justice burning at its core. We are not playing politics; we did not ask for this debate. This House has been asked to place confidence in you and we cannot do that for the reasons I have outlined.

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