Terry Brennan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support my colleagues who commended the Garda and the PSNI on recapturing the criminal in Belfast. It is to be hoped he will not be maintained in this country at the taxpayers' expense. I hope he is sent back to where he belongs and serves his sentence.

We have called for a debate with the Minister for Justice and Equality. There were two robberies in my locality in the past four or five weeks and which were obviously carried out by the same gang. Many people have dogs in their properties and in each case the dog on the business premises continued to bark. In one case the wife went to the door to see why it was barking. She was then accosted by four people wearing balaclavas who went into the building. They locked her and her children into a small bathroom and broke the handle of the bathroom door to ensure they could not get out or ring anybody. In both instances when the husbands came home, they found the intruders had robbed the house. It is obvious the same four people were involved in both incidents which took place five miles from the Border. Within five minutes the intruders would have been in another jurisdiction. I called to a house recently but the woman living there did not answer the front door. She spoke to me instead through a bedroom window. She did not know who I was. I commended her on doing that, but things are now at a stage where one cannot open one's front door if one does not know-----