Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)

I thank CAB for the work it has done over the past number of years. I really want to talk about the community safety fund and how that can be enhanced.

The aims of the Bill are positive aims that my party and I support. Any efforts that attempt to deny criminals their ill-gotten gains are welcome. The message must be delivered loud and clear that crime does not pay. We have to make that a reality.

In my home city of Limerick, we have a number of ongoing feuds between criminals and criminal gangs and it is almost inevitable that lives will be lost. I have said that in this Chamber a number of times. Often, these criminal feuds are between drug dealers. The associated feuds are fuelled by their desire to increase their share of the market. Some of the places impacted are areas of deprivation. Organised crime flourishes in areas that have been abandoned by central government. This is as true of parts of Limerick as it is of parts of inner city Dublin. The vast majority of people in these communities have retired or are hard-working people, and they just want to do the right thing. They want to make a positive impact on their local communities, but the criminal elements there who seek an illegally gained quick profit, often on the misery of others, do significant damage. These criminal elements have destroyed many people. They flaunt illegally gained wealth, and this wealth can attract vulnerable youths into their criminal grip.

Taking their ill-gotten wealth away from these anti-community elements is crucial. It demonstrates that crime does not pay, that their success, for want of a better word, will only ever be fleeting and that the State, often for the first time, will have the backs of decent people in many of these areas.

It is immensely satisfying to see this wealth return to communities through the community safety fund. Such an approach is one that Sinn Féin has advocated for years. My colleagues sitting beside me here, Deputies Mark Ward and Ruairí Ó Murchú, introduced the Proceeds of Crime (Investment in Disadvantage Communities) (Amendment) Bill in 2021. In its four-year operation to date, the community safety fund has returned €7.6 million to the communities. That is very welcome. We should be putting more back into the communities most impacted by crime.

There are elements of the fund we would like to see altered, namely, the arduous application process that often sees the funding not awarded to the communities most in need. To this end, we would like to see the funding allocation linked to the Pobal deprivation index. On that, there is no area in the State more deprived than the St. Mary's Park area of my city of Limerick. Although I am open to correction, there is no area more impacted by crack cocaine, antisocial behaviour, criminality and organised crime gangs that have devastated that area over the past number of years. I would hope that the brilliant groups in St. Mary's Park do not have to go through an arduous process and that the community safety group will telephone a number of such areas and give them the funding. We all know exactly what they need.

Limerick and other areas have had a massive problem with crack cocaine. At the same time, we have fantastic local community projects in Limerick and they do some fantastic work with limited resources. I would like to see the grant amounts available through the community safety fund increase dramatically. We also have many groups and projects doing incredible work trying to break the cycle of imprisonment in crime. They could do so much more with increased resources. This would save us money in the long term. It would keep young people out of prison.

Sinn Féin welcomes this Bill. We look forward to seeing its impact on those who do so much damage to our communities. More must be done to support the vast majority of families who are hard working and law abiding and only want to raise their children and get on with their lives.

It does not happen by accident that most of the money seized by CAB originates in areas that are highly disadvantaged. We need to see a stronger approach by the Government. I am calling on it to ring-fence the money seized by CAB and to ensure it is invested back into areas most affected by crime.

To reference the Bill itself, the Criminal Assets Bureau, since its inception in 1996, has worked well. Its seizure of assets and wealth has had a devastating effect on criminals but has been a joy for many local residents to see. The Bill will strengthen the Criminal Assets Bureau. These new provisions will deprive criminals of illegally obtained assets. Those assets should have been returned to the communities most affected. While this is starting to be done, it needs to be speeded up.

Section 8 of the Bill seeks to amend section 4 of the Proceeds of Crime Act so that the time period between an order being made that assets are proceeds of crime and a disposal order is reduced from seven years to two years. This is a welcome amendment. It ensures that assets, such as houses, can be returned to the communities quickly.

The immediate appointment of a receiver to assets is also extremely welcome. Once in place, this will ensure that the suspect of crime is deprived of any benefit from these assets. Furthermore, the restriction or freezing of financial accounts and the detention of moveable assets in a timelier manner will ensure that the gangs and their associates are very much restricted in the use of these assets. That is very welcome.

The Criminal Assets Bureau has been a fantastic resource to target criminals and it is pleasing to see its powers will be increased. CAB is there to pounce on the proceeds of crime but we must as a State to do more to stop criminal behaviour at its inception. It is a role that the community gardaí have performed well over the past number of years. Unfortunately, we have seen their numbers slashed. We need to see these gardaí returned to areas of deprivation in urban estates. We need these communities to see the Garda in a positive light and not only see gardaí when they are undertaking raids, etc. We must also ensure that the bond between the community and the Garda remains unbroken. Increasingly, the number of community gardaí is a key link in that chain.

We also need to ensure that we focus on little - I am not sure what word I could use to describe them - criminals donning expensive watches, driving high-powered vehicles and going off on holidays, all over social media, while not seeming to explain how they earn any of that or ever work at all.

I very much welcome today's debate and the aims of the legislation but this cannot happen in isolation. We must reinvest in these communities. The State must re-engage with these communities so that we can limit the lure of the criminal lifestyle. I very much welcome these enhanced powers for the Criminal Assets Bureau.

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