Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I have already looked at the proposal. However, we are not simply talking about catering premises in the ordinary colloquial understanding of the term. This phrase includes licensed premises, discos and the like. If one looks at the definition of "catering premises", we are not just talking about fast food outlets or the like, we are talking about all night time activity.

For this section to have any effect, there must be disorder in a premises. It must be disorder that is likely to recur. The Garda's opinion must be that there has been disorder either on the premises or in the vicinity, and involving persons who are on the premises, or noise emanating from the premises, or emanating from the vicinity of the premises and caused by persons who were on the premises, has been so loud, so continuous, so repeated, of such duration or pitch or occurring at such times as to give reasonable cause for annoyance to persons in that vicinity, and such disorder or noise is likely to recur.

In those circumstances a member of the Garda Síochána can go to the court to seek an order. The first thing he must do is request the licensee to take such action as is reasonably in his control to prevent it. A licensee cannot prevent people from behaving in a way which is totally outside his control. One cannot ask people to prevent events from happening if, with the best will in the world, they cannot make people behave.

If a person does not comply with a reasonable request of the Garda Síochána, an officer of the Garda must go to the District Court – there is no problem at this stage – and persuade a District Court judge that it is unreasonable of the person to refuse to comply with the request he has made of him. In those circumstances only, the District Court has discretion to make an order.