Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like the Senator, I welcome the motion, although it is unfortunate that we need such legislation. The Minister of State, whom I welcome, mentioned some interesting facts in her contribution. Earlier she outlined how many people have been arrested using the powers that we will renew tonight. She also listed the number of prosecutions and pending prosecutions. If the legislation was not needed there would be no prosecutions, but there are prosecutions, so the legislation is needed. That is plain and simple.

Gangland activity has reached an appalling level.

The only way we can have some control over it is by enabling and empowering the judicial system and the police force to deal with it. Crime gangs are running amok in parts of this city. They were in parts of Limerick, but the authorities there, all credit to them, are dealing with the issue. It is shocking to turn on the news early some morning or at tea time and discover another gangland murder or double murder has taken place. This is becoming too frequent and needs to be dealt with head on. If the Garda Commissioner were to recommend to the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Minister were to recommend to the House that we introduce more stringent powers, I would be the very first to support this. Rights bring responsibilities and until we get this very serious problem under control, areas of this city will continue to be no-go areas.

Parts of the city are ravaged by drug abuse; poor unfortunate victims are drug addicts because of the greed of these gangs. They are not happy to make hundreds, thousands or millions of euro, they want to make billions. We are dealing with absolute greed and they will stop at nothing. They would kill their own families to amass wealth. We got a glimpse of this in last year's award winning RTE series "Love/Hate". We got a glimpse of the absolute brutality and savagery of the people involved who have no regard for authority or the Government. If they thought they would get away with shooting the entire Cabinet and Opposition, they would do it. We are dealing with very dangerous people and need to deal with them accordingly.

I would never question Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh's personal motivation in taking a position on anything, but his party is probably a little misguided on this issue. A number of Sinn Féin activists are very committed to dealing with what is going on in this and other cities and trying to eliminate drug dealing and the masses of money being made. This legislation empowers them and the Garda in trying to achieve what they are motivated to achieve. Senator Averil Power is correct that it is appalling that we still need the Special Criminal Court but we do. As long as we do, the Oireachtas has a responsibility to ensure the Garda and the judicial system have the necessary powers to deal with this issue. It is not that long ago that a journalist was murdered for trying to expose the people concerned and that could easily happen again. On that sombre note, I hope the motion will receive unanimous support.