Michael Finucane (Fine Gael)

Last night, the pattern of gangland killing continued. We hear typical responses following such events. People will say the killing was barbaric and savage and we will hear the usual response that the gardaí have all the resources they need. The successes of Operations Oak and Anvil are often cited as statistics on the matter. This morning, I listened to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who said that under the Constitution, this is not a national emergency. Let us not play with semantics. It is a national emergency as far as ordinary people are concerned. If one listened to Joe Duffy's show, "Liveline", yesterday, one would have heard the family of Anthony Campbell, the innocent young man who was shot down, say it did not believe the killers would be caught. This is the level of despondency among the people. I say to the Minister that it is a national emergency.

In the past five years, no gang leader has been convicted in this country. They may be taken out by their own people within gangland, but no person has been convicted. There is a 15% success rate where gun death convictions are concerned. With such a low success rate, many people will step into that vacuum of lawlessness in respect of gun crime.

We face a serious situation. The drugs industry is worth more than €1 billion, which is the equivalent of the entire Garda budget. In this context, the Minister must pull together all the pieces. It is not simply a matter of taking out of circulation the main drug dealers in Dublin. Drugs must be tackled where they exist in every rural community. We cannot speak specifically about 35 people in the drugs squad who have intelligence resources, we must involve the entire gardaí. We must take drugs off the streets and treat the drugs problem as a national emergency.

My party had to take action in this direction in respect of many elements of law in 1996 over the murder of Veronica Guerin. I hope we receive an appropriate response and not the usual mantra-type responses we get after each killing.