Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

I speak in support of both amendments tabled by Deputy Carthy and Sinn Féin. It is clear the Government has been dragging its feet on the Offences Against the State Act. In 2020, Sinn Féin called for a review of this Act. A review was put in place later that year and we called for an end to the Act. Every year there is an extension of this emergency legislation and, based on the Minister's earlier comments, it looks like we will be back here again next year and probably the year after that if urgency is not applied to this. That needs to stop and legislation based on the review needs to be passed immediately.

It has been two years since the report of the review group was published yet we are still waiting for the Government to act on the findings of that report. The report recommended that the Special Criminal Court be abolished and that a human rights-centred non-jury court replace it. This must only be used if the threshold is reached. We need to have 21st century legislation in order to deal with criminal gangs and firm legislation to protect communities and people. This must include jurors, witnesses and everyone involved in the system, including gardaí. We want to see that put in place.

It is often said we need a Special Criminal Court to protect jurors from intimidation by criminal gangs but little has been done by the Government over the years to protect jurors in general. There have been recommendations from the Law Reform Commission since 2013 to set up a single offence of jury tampering and to end the daily roll call of jurors in open court. Sinn Féin included these recommendations in our submission to the independent review of the Act. I reiterate what my colleague, Deputy Carthy said, that Sinn Féin was the only party in the Dáil to make submissions to this review. Last month I contacted the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, to draft a Bill based on the report on this review. If the Government is unwilling to move forward on this, Sinn Féin will do so. Based on the Minister's earlier comments, we will be here again next year and probably the year after that.

The battle against organised crime starts in our communities. We have to resource our communities. Yesterday, at the committee on justice the Minister admitted to me that he could not guarantee he would reach his target of 5,000 new Garda recruits by the end of the term of this Government. He admitted defeat in that he will not reach 1,000 recruits this year. My calculations show me the Minister will be lucky to get 750 recruits this year. The Minister said he has funding for these positions and I did welcome that yesterday. However, funding alone will not train the number of gardaí needed to keep our communities safe. There is also a crisis in the retention of gardaí and I know of some gardaí who have emigrated to Australia to join the police force down there.

The GRA has raised concerns about the current community policing model, saying that we have effectively lost control of our community gardaí. Communities deserve to feel safe but the situation does not seem to be improving. As Sinn Féin's spokesperson on Dublin and community safety I want my county to be safe, not just the city centre. Dublin city centre has seen an increase in Garda visibility in recent times and I welcome this, as do most Dublin TDs and most TDs in this House. What this does, however, is push gangs and criminal activity further into the suburbs of Dublin and beyond, into the outlying counties, where Garda visibility is not as high as it is in the city centre. I can give testament to that. In my own area of Dublin Mid-West there has been an increase in open drug dealing and antisocial behaviour. I have raised this in the Dáil in the past. Often when constituents call the Garda there is only one garda available. Yesterday, I mentioned to the Minister that at one stage during an incident last year there was only one Garda car available to the people of Clondalkin and Ballyfermot and that is a huge area. It is not good for these communities to be just left waiting for a Garda car and someone to call out. There has to be urgency in addressing these shortfalls.

I am also Sinn Féin's spokesperson on youth justice. We need better resourcing of youth diversion programmes and other programmes that can reduce the number of young people involved in offending and criminal activity. Criminal gangs are grooming young people to go into crime. They are grooming them in my area and taking advantage of young people who are trapped in poverty, growing up in an area they feel has been forgotten about and feel they have been left behind. They see organised criminals as somebodies and they are attracted to the lifestyle. They see the new runners and jackets, the flash cars and the opportunity to be a so-called somebody. I want to put on the record that the organised criminals who operate in my area and other areas are absolute nobodies. They offer nothing to my community. They actually suck the lifeblood from our communities and we need to have every resource available to stop them from operating in my community and other communities in Dublin. As there is a lack of gardaí in the area, however, they are unable to tackle this. To be clear, the fault does not lie with gardaí. There are some really good community gardaí in my area. They operate street leagues. I attended an event for the Clondalkin Equine Club at the weekend and the mounted unit and community gardaí were present and it was really good to see them operating and engaging with the community on that basis and building up relationships. The problem is there is not enough of them and their absence leaves the area open and prey to these organised criminal gangs. We urgently need to see an increase in the numbers of gardaí. To be honest, the Minister did not fill me with great confidence yesterday that we will see those numbers. We might see them in Dublin city but we might not see Garda numbers increase in the surrounding areas of Dublin in the near future. I hope when I come back here next year to have a debate on the same issue that I will be proved wrong and there will be sufficient numbers but, based on the figures given yesterday, I do not see that happening.

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