Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus beidh mé chomh gasta agus is féidir liom. Gabhaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire as a ceapachán agus a hainmniú mar Aire Dlí agus Cirt agus Comhionannais. I congratulate the Minister on her appointment. Like other colleagues, I followed with great admiration her work in her previous role during a very challenging and difficult time. She served in that position with great distinction. I begin by echoing the condolences for Detective Garda Colm Horkan. I also wish to take the opportunity very quickly to send condolences to the family of young Noah Donohoe from Belfast who, unfortunately, went missing and whose body was recovered in recent days. Our thoughts go out to his mother and his many friends and family.

Our approach to this item has been stated in the Dáil. I hope the Minister will forgive me, and I do not like doing it, but I must read my notes from my telephone as we had some technical difficulties trying to get them printed. I ask her to excuse me for doing it. For too long the annual debate on the renewal of these emergency provisions has been characterised not by a proper examination of either provision or the provisions' effectiveness but by the historical political marriage to this legislation by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. For the record, we are not debating the continued use of the Special Criminal Court or the principle of non-jury courts. That is contained in primary legislation. What we are being asked to renew is emergency provisions. By its nature emergency legislation should be required to deal with an emergency. Whatever circumstances, and perspective on them, existed when these powers were first passed, those circumstances plainly do not exist now.

There is no emergency in 2020. What there is in communities throughout this State is ongoing issues with serious organised crime. These emergency provisions did not stop the heroin barons in the 1980s, John Gilligan and others in the 1990s and the Kinahans and their like in the 2000s getting mega-rich on the backs of ordinary, decent and many working class communities while the political class sat here nodding these provisions through, year after year, with little or no regard for what was needed to deal with serious organised crime. What we must put in place in the 21st century is 21st century law that will deal with 21st century criminal gangs. The criminal gangs are no respecters of national borders, operate on a global scale and very often operate entirely online. Do people seriously expect legislation which was mainly drafted in the 1930s to be able to deal with these modern challenges? As legislators, we owe it to the people who sent us here to examine what we are voting on. We owe it to the communities that are ravaged by the activities of international criminal gangs to put in place the necessary legal framework to allow the courts and the Garda to do their jobs effectively.

That is why Sinn Féin has called for a review of these powers. The current legislation has failed communities. Those failures are written in the blood of the young people killed in feuds and the lives lost to heroin and other drugs, and are seen each time a parent ends up trying to scrape together money to pay off a child's drug debt to try to save the child's life in the face of threats from thugs. The reason we called for a review is to create the space over the next year to put together primary legislation which is not couched in an emergency, is not reliant on an annual review and is not contaminated by annual political discourse, but which puts in place a 21st century legal framework aimed at keeping our communities safe. Surely we can collectively build a political consensus on that aim. Surely we can bring a proper focus on what is required in the Ireland of today, not fighting political battles over a legislative measure from another time. Indeed, it is worth noting that the Good Friday Agreement, endorsed overwhelmingly by the Irish people 22 years ago, demanded that the Irish Government initiate a wide-ranging review of the Offences against the State Acts 1939 to 1985 with a view to both reform and dispensing with those elements no longer required as circumstances permit.

I appeal to other parties and stakeholders to open the door to a better way through the review process, to abandon the notion of emergency powers, to move to the space of giving the Garda and the courts the tools to keep communities safe, to do it in a mature, sensible and grown up way, to take counsel from those on the front line and then go about framing effective legislation that can become the start of a new way of tackling the criminal challenges the Ireland of 2020 faces. We have called for that review and the Minister referred to it in her contribution. Other colleagues have also referred to it. While I appreciate that it was only announced recently and the Minister has only taken office in the last few days, perhaps she will be in a position to facilitate us, for the purposes of the record and our information, by outlining some of what she understands and hopes that review will be and what she intends to do with it as Minister so all the points raised by me and Members across the House and across political views can be taken on board. We can assist the Minister and work collaboratively and positively with the shared stated aim of trying to get legislation that works effectively, is human rights compliant and will ultimately work to keep the communities that are suffering the most safe from the criminal gangs who are putting them under such threat.