Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Chathaoirleach. Ba mhaith liom i dtús báire fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Stáit, mo chomhghleacaí ó Dhún Laoghaire, mar a dúirt an Seanadóir Horkan. Bhíomar ar Chomhairle Contae Dhún Laoghaire-Ráth an Dúin le chéile agus cuirim fáilte roimhe.

I welcome this Bill and, in fairness, much work has gone into it and it is a very important matter. I say that as somebody generally opposed to the "Big Brother-isation" of our communities and I have a real difficulty with the way closed-circuit television, CCTV, is used in other jurisdictions. Travelling through the UK, one can see it is pervasive and intrusive. This is also true of places in the United States and Europe. I am opposed to the wholesale rolling out of CCTV everywhere, where nobody can move in public without being observed by an unseen observer, computer or whatever.

That said, we all know there are issues that must be addressed and there is an ongoing scourge of particular criminal activity. Dumping and littering has been mentioned but there are other aspects as well, and we are failing to address them in real terms. I see CCTV as part of the toolkit we can use to address those matters, starting to combat them and sending a message to people that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated. We must show people that if they are going to engage in this kind of activity, they will be caught, prosecuted and suffer the consequences of disrespect and the absolute failure to have any regard to other members of the community.

Places in my area have been mentioned on a number of occasions, as well as Tidy Towns groups and community organisations that look after places from Blackrock to Shankill, Monkstown to Dún Laoghaire and everywhere in between. These are good, community-minded people who set aside every Saturday morning to keep their area tidy, clean and presentable. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who have no regard for others whatever. They are not all from the area and they come from outside, as has been mentioned. Many of them have good intentions and we might see somebody arriving to a bottle bank with a box of bottles for disposal. If the bottle bank is full, the person might simply leave the box there and the cardboard will disintegrate as soon as it gets wet. People might come with other recyclable material that for whatever reason they have not put into a recycling centre and leave them at the bottle bank, where they become litter. There are also much more nefarious people who set out with the aim of littering, dumping and not taking the civic responsibility we would expect and hope everyone would exercise.

The key words I apply to this legislation is "appropriate" and "proportionate". It is appropriate and proportionate to what is involved to have a key opportunity for local authorities to get involved in a crime-solving measure that we know can work. The GDPR protects all our data. It is an important piece of European and Irish national legislation that is there to protect people's personal data from abuse and being dispersed etc. It is often, however, seen as an obstacle to doing things. When I was on the council, I often said that sometimes officialdom can find certain things as a mechanism to stop doing things or not doing things in the first place. Very often we hear discussion of insurance or legal reasons as an impediment and data protection is another example. These are all measured and reasonable legal instruments put in place to protect us all, and the GDPR is one of them. Nevertheless, it has been used by many organisations and people as an instrument to stop us using such resources. The use of CCTV has suffered as a result.

I pay particular tribute to the work done on section 7 of the Bill, which provides for the admissibility of evidence in prosecutions for acts like littering. That is entirely appropriate and proportionate. We need the message to go out that where there is evidence of people committing a crime, there would be a local authority, as the prosecutor in the legislation, to prosecute the matter and bring such people before the courts for the purposes of making people accountable for that kind of behaviour.

I am against CCTV being used in a careless or scattergun approach but there is a good notion that our local authorities, particularly councillors at the local level, should be involved with deciding there are black spot sites for particular criminal activity. Equipping them to deal with that is entirely appropriate. For the past quarter of a century we have seen the gradual diminution of local authority powers and it is entirely appropriate and right that this type of legislation would put this responsibility back in the hands of local representatives. Ultimately, they are the people closest to our communities around the country and they speak to residents and business owners around the country. They should have a serious role in putting in place a mechanism to help address matters that affect us all.I praise Senator Malcolm Byrne for bringing forward this legislation for that reason alone. I also think it is important that this is a workable solution. This Bill can solve a problem that we know exists. Most local authorities have probably been mentioned at this stage but we know from speaking to our colleagues throughout the country that this is an ongoing issue. It is important that local authorities are equipped with the skills and legislative instruments they need to address this issue and stop this kind of behaviour. I hope the Minister of State will give a positive response to this Bill and help it on its way to becoming law and empowering local authorities again.