Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I commend this legislation. I have an abiding interest in transnational crime within the European space. The Garda Síochána is the primary intelligence agency within the State, although we have new emerging structures. The discussion of this legislation prompts me to comment that we, as a House and a Legislature, need to be apprised of the development of that new intelligence entity within the Department of Justice and the Department of the Taoiseach, in particular any powers that might be assigned to the individual who heads up that new entity. However, that is for another day.

Most of us in this House are old enough to remember the advent of heroin with the Dunnes in Dublin. That was the beginning of transnational crime and it is what the Garda Síochána referred to as “crime ordinary”. Back in the day, crime ordinary was criminal activity that involved traditional housebreaking, public order offences and so on, whereas “crime special” referred to the activities of paramilitaries, subversives and other groups on this island. There was a clear distinction identified within the Garda Síochána between crime ordinary and crime special. However, over the years, as the drugs trade has become more and more entrenched in the Republic and throughout the island, people who would formerly have engaged in activities that were categorised as “crime ordinary” have come to be engaged in tactics and strategies that would be consistent with crime special. Hence the extension of some of our legislation to cover organised crime gangs.

There is a very blurred distinction and, in fact, there is no distinction whatsoever. The United Nations report on international terrorism states that organised crime and terrorism go hand in hand, and that is particularly so on this island. Paramilitaries from the loyalist community, dissident republicans and so on cross over into the activities of organised crime gangs, including drug smuggling and people smuggling, and they will mobilise nationalist and loyalist rhetoric in order to screen their criminal activities.Something they are interested in is us not having a seamless jurisdiction on this island or the type of interagency co-operation that would be supported by this legislation. It suits them to have a hard border on the island, although that is not something that anyone is contemplating.

They remain a serious and persistent threat to the security of the State. We have seen recent successes by the Garda and its partners in Spain and elsewhere in the arrests of senior figures in the Hutch and Kinahan extended gangs and their repatriation to Ireland. This legislation is important.

I have been in this space since 1989. Due to the rupture between me and the military authorities in 2000 following the publication of my research on the treatment of women within the Defence Forces, I have had to rely as a security analyst on international contacts to inform me about the defence intelligence and security situation, which I have been writing and publishing about for the past 22 years. It is an interesting picture they paint. It differs to a certain extent from the concerns being raised in traditional Irish media, by which I mean the mainstream print and broadcast media. My principal concern about transnational crime, which is integrated both vertically and horizontally throughout the EU and far beyond its borders, is that the main threat to the security of this State resides in elements that are active across the island. For example, the gang responsible for the shooting of Lyra McKee, which rightly attracted a great deal of international attention, was, according to my sources, also involved with the sourcing of a weapon that was used in the murder of a garda in County Louth. These people operate on both sides of the Border and internationally.

Whatever happens on this island in the next ten to 15 years, we must have seamless co-operation across the jurisdictions. We need to plan for the administration of justice, police intelligence and defence intelligence gathering on the island. The Bill covers the European Arrest Warrant and agreements that have been agreed over the years within the EU, but we must be careful that, post Brexit, we do not lose the cohesion and close co-operation that we need with those agencies and services in the UK to ensure that we can guarantee the security of our citizens, particularly in light of what may happen on this island in the next ten to 15 years.

Ireland has not been a net contributor of intelligence for quite some time. One could call that a part of the peace dividend from the peace process. We are net recipients of intelligence and, therefore, we need to be careful that, as we bring forward our newly emerging intelligence structures, they are amenable to oversight by the Houses. That will be crucial.