Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I thank all Deputies for their contributions to this evening's debate. I know the thoughts of everyone in the House very much remain with the victims of the appalling attack that took place 12 days ago outside Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire and my thoughts are, in particular, with the young child and her carer who are both still in a critical condition in hospital. Of course, we are all wishing for their full recovery.

Deputy McDonald has left the Chamber. My colleagues have responded well to her comments. The Deputy and I attended a meeting recently and we both know what was asked of us by parents. Deputy McDonald has failed miserably this evening to fulfil that request from parents.

It is a great honour to be Minister for Justice. I see it as my duty to build stronger and safer communities, ensure that people are and feel safe, support victims, back An Garda Síochána, the Courts Service and prison officers and use the time I have as Minister for good. There are challenges; I have never said there are not. Of course, there are challenges but I believe we are making real progress in addressing them.

Resourcing our gardaí, tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, introducing tougher sentences and giving communities a real say in how they can be part of safety in their own community have been progressed under my watch. Of course, we all want more gardaí but we have a larger budget than ever before. A total of €2.31 billion will be spent next year, a 23% increase since I became Minister. Recruitment into An Garda Síochána is building momentum, following a closure, post Covid. People might not want to admit that, but the college was closed to new recruits for almost two years. We would have had 1,000 additional gardaí to what we have now had the college not closed. Again, we can ignore that but it is a fact.

Between 700 and 800 new recruits will enter the college this year. The momentum will continue and next year we will have a recruitment campaign for An Garda Síochána and the Garda Reserve. We have increased the training allowance by two thirds. We have increased the age at which members can enter An Garda Síochána from 35 to 50. We have also increased the number of staff by more than 50% since 2015. Staff are doing excellent work, but we have also freed up 900 members on the front line. We will do more, not just to support new members but also those who are current members of An Garda Síochána.

We are building new stations. We have the highest ever number of Garda cars and vans. As gardaí build international law enforcement coalitions to bring crime gangs who spread misery in our communities to justice, we support them. Again, that includes the Government deciding only today to open negotiations with the United Arab Emirates on an extradition treaty.

I have passed a series of laws to protect victims and punish perpetrators. We have doubled the maximum sentence for assault causing harm. We have increased the sentence for conspiracy to murder to life. I have worked with colleagues in government to increase the sentence for assaulting a Garda member or an emergency worker. I have worked with Deputy Naughten across the House to improve post-release supervision for sex offenders. We have stand-alone offences of stalking and non-fatal strangulation. Only last Wednesday, we passed legislation to allow the Garda to roll out body worn cameras, starting in Dublin city centre, next year. I will introduce facial recognition technology to support gardaí even further.

Tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, as colleagues have alluded to, has been one of my top priorities. I have been very fortunate on some occasions to have the full support of the House. I was glad to have the support of Deputies Daly, Ó Ríordáin and others when we passed the Bill to establish a new domestic violence agency, Cuan, which will be up and running in January. The legislation to update our incitement to hatred laws to introduce hate crimes was supported almost unanimously in the House.

I believe our zero-tolerance plan will have a real effect on taking the epidemic of domestic violence and dealing with it once and for all. It is important to remember what we are talking about. Every single day in this country women are abused, strangled and beaten. They are victims of coercive control. They are stalked. They are sometimes stabbed and even worse. We are doubling the number of refuges to support them.

We are reforming education and raising awareness of the real attitudes which underpin so much of this violence and abuse. Working with Deputy Howlin, again across the House, we enacted laws to criminalise intimate-image abuse. I have increased funding to front-line organisations that protect victims to record levels and established a victims' forum to make sure all victims of every crime have a say when it comes to laws, policy and services. Separate from these issues, we have introduced a series of measures to help bring down the cost of insurance. We have rebalanced the duty of care and, building on the wonderful work of my colleague Deputy Flanagan, I introduced personal injury guidelines. I have a plan to build 600 more prison spaces and, to Deputy Ó Ríordáin's point, actions have been brought forward to deal with mental health and addiction problems with prisoners, actions from an excellent plan set about and chaired by his former colleague Kathleen Lynch. We have appointed 24 additional judges this year to speed up our courts. This is the record I stand on and am proud to stand over.

I have also listened to those who have concerns about safety in Dublin. We have a wonderful capital city, enriched by the many nationalities in it. I understand that everyone living in it, working in it or visiting it wants to feel safe and be safe, and I know that is not always the case. I have listened to the experiences of those living and working in the city, not just in the past few weeks but over the past number of years. That is why we opened the O'Connell Street Garda station, reopened Fitzgibbon Street station and launched Operation Citizen to prioritise high-visibility policing. It is why €10 million for extra overtime was allocated to complement the work of the 3,742 gardaí who currently work in Dublin.

We all know, however, that policing alone cannot resolve this. We have all said this in the Chamber. We must be mindful of the responsibility we ask of our city centre in shouldering the accommodating of many vulnerable people. I have established a new partnership in the north inner city to bring everybody around the table, including An Garda Síochána, Members of the Oireachtas and local representatives, community representatives, healthcare providers and education providers, all with the intention of making sure everybody has a say in their safety. We have doubled funding to youth justice, working closely with the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, and because of the reforms of An Garda Síochána, we now have dedicated community policing teams in our city centre, further strengthening the bonds between gardaí and the communities they serve. Of course, the more gardaí we have, the stronger those teams can be.

A Cheann Comhairle, the scenes we saw in Dublin on 23 November were disgraceful. Seeing people exploit an appalling attack on schoolchildren to loot, riot and burn shocked us all and these thugs and criminals will be brought to justice. An Garda Síochána contained the riot and restored law and order in the space of hours, and the men and women who put themselves at risk will always have my support. The same cannot be said for Sinn Féin. It has been quick to fall back on its usual playbook of division and disunity, and of using an appalling situation to play politics, point-score and once again undermine An Garda Síochána. It is worth repeating that when I pick up the phone to ring the Garda Commissioner or talk to gardaí, it is to offer support. When Sinn Féin does so, it is to call for the resignation of the Commissioner.

It is 12 days on, a week since the previous debate, and nothing constructive has come from the Sinn Féin benches. When people want stability, Sinn Féin wants instability. Its mantra is to sack, sue and bully. Deputy McDonald wants to fire the Garda Commissioner. Deputy Ó Broin wants to fire civil servants who disagree with him. When we need calm heads and our own citizens are in trouble abroad, Sinn Féin wants to expel ambassadors. When journalists report facts freely and fairly, it sues. Anyone in its party with an independent thought is bullied until they comply or leave. It might surprise Deputy McDonald to learn this is not an episode of "The Apprentice"; you cannot fire your way out of a situation. It is a serious business that requires judgment and leadership, qualities she and her party repeatedly fail to show.

Let us ask ourselves, if Sinn Féin were in government and Deputy McDonald were Taoiseach, after sacking the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner, who would she turn to for advice on security and policing? Would it be the same republican family who said it was okay to ignore Covid rules for a political funeral, the same group of people she consulted before she unashamedly politicised policing in the past? This is nothing new. When Gerry Adams was arrested and questioned as part of the investigation into the murder of Jean McConville, she said it was politically contrived. She immediately sought to undermine the Commissioner when he was appointed in 2018, and now Sinn Féin attacks the Commissioner and our Garda time and again. I will quote a line Deputy McDonald will know, given she quotes this poet regularly, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." No matter how Sinn Féin has tried to fool the Irish people, its first instincts are still the same, namely, to undermine and attack our Garda, and to sow disunity and division when people want unity and leadership.

It has been a difficult few weeks, above all for the victims of the recent attack, for their families and communities, and they remain at the forefront of my mind. So too is the safety of Irish people. All my actions during my time in office have been taken to make sure people are safe and feel safe. It is for that reason I will continue to work to build stronger, safer communities, and I will not be deterred by a Sinn Féin Party which seeks to sow division and disunity for its own ends.

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