There are a few points I want to raise on this Estimate. One of them arises out of the problem of increased road accidents and death on the roads generally, which I think is causing a considerable amount of public disquiet. I do not think that the Minister appears to have provided us with any serious reason to think that he is moving towards some kind of a solution of the incidence of accidents on the roads.
I should like to suggest that he should give consideration to a few points, one of which is the question of instituting driving tests. The other, of course, is another approach to the question of drunken driving. With the extraordinarily rapid development of motor cars and the speed of the modern motor car, it is very wrong that a person can walk into an office, get a driving licence and be given thereby the right to drive what is potentially a lethal weapon in certain hands, without any need on his part to prove his capacity to drive a car at all.
Some people go to the trouble of having driving lessons and become reasonably competent to drive but there is no compulsion whatever on them to do so. If somebody wins a motor car in a pool or a newspaper competition, he can walk into an office and then step into his car and drive away. That seems to be an extraordinarily risky thing to permit. People who suffer from some medical disability such as severe deafness, partial blindness or incapacity of some kind or another, may take out a licence and are then permitted to drive a car. I would be the last to impose a penalty on anyone because of disability, but that disability must add to the risk incurred by the pedestrian, the cyclist or the other motorists. The common good would demand that steps be taken to see that those who get licences are competent to drive and are capable of driving efficiently.
The Minister should consider the introduction of driving tests. I know they are not a complete answer, and that one has still accidents even where there are driving tests. However, we would discharge our responsibilities to the fullest if we ensured that persons could drive competently and capably.
Drunken driving is a complicated problem, because of the widespread general habit—in most cases, a harmless habit—of people taking an occasional drink. The difficulty arises when a person takes more than he is capable of carrying and then is permitted to drive a car in a slightly or seriously intoxicated condition.
Medical tests have shown conclusively that quite a small amount of alcohol can impair one's judgment quite severely, and that that person's ability is not as great as that of a person who is normally a safe driver and who has not taken intoxicating liquor. There is no simple answer to the problem, because of the different capacity of people to take drink without becoming intoxicated. There are various other considerations, such as the culpability of the different persons involved in an accident.
From reading the cases in the District Courts and elsewhere it is quite clear that justices find themselves in great difficulty when faced with the eloquence of lawyers on both sides. Later on, juries in manslaughter cases find it hard to decide fairly the degree of culpability and negligence in such a case. The dead man or child cannot be restored to life, and there is very little satisfaction to the parent or relative when such a death occurs as a result of someone having taken intoxicating drink.
At the same time, we should take positive steps to frighten those who, of their own accord, or through tiredness associated with a lowered capacity to absorb alcohol, find themselves in charge of a motor car and incapable of driving it. There should be a more severe deterrent against the drunken driver. Those who at present take more drink than they can carry know that there is a reasonable chance now that, given a sufficiently eloquent counsel, they may get off with a warning or a relatively small penalty. That outlet lies subconsciously in their minds, and it should be taken away from them. Our laws should be more closely related to those of Sweden, where they deal very stringently with such persons.
Now that it has been established medically that blood tests are reliable, the Minister should consider providing some place for the use of such tests in assessing the degree of intoxication and culpability in such a charge. It should be made clear to those who drive while drunk that if they are found to have imbibed a certain percentage of alcohol —whether a glass or two glasses, and so on—they would be faced with very severe penalities, which would become automatic on such a positive finding.
The first penalty is a severe one, especially in the case of those who earn their living by driving, such as commercial travellers and lorry drivers. It is the withdrawal of the licence for at least one year, and possibly for more than one year. Going further still, there is the imposition of some term of imprisonment. Much as I dislike severe punishment, I believe the Minister will not make any serious impact on the incidence of road accidents unless he insists on some such rules.
Firstly, there must be a standard of driving before one is allowed to handle this lethal weapon, which can travel at 60 or 80 miles an hour, dependent on the person's capacity to pay for it, on congested roads which often are unsuitable for fast traffic. Secondly, the Minister would discharge his responsibility to the public if he would take courage—and it requires courage—to try to deal with this question of casual drinking and dangerous driving. There is little alternative left to him but to consider the introduction of the blood tests for alcohol content. From the District Court cases, it is clear that the medical evidence—probably conscientiously, in most cases—is of a most divergent character. One perfectly honest doctor may say he thinks a person is perfectly sober and capable of driving, while another makes a completely contradictory statement.
Ordinarily they do it because they are employed in a sort of venal kind of way, but, generally speaking, I do not think a doctor is in a position to make a hard and fast decision whether one person is capable and another is not capable. I think the only way to come to a decision is to lay down a specific level of alcohol which we will not tolerate in a person who has an accident, and let everybody know that in advance. If certain people insist on consuming that amount of alcohol let them take the consequence with their eyes open.
On the question of juvenile crime, I do not think that the Minister is completely justified in blaming the parents for lack of parental control. Possibly it is true in certain cases in juvenile crime, and it is possibly due to the fact that there are many families—too many families—in Ireland where the father, because of circumstances which he cannot control, is not at home. He is abroad; the father has had to emigrate through no fault of his own, and he has left the mother in control of a large family, or a medium sized family, and she is unable to control the boys as they grow up. That is one of the serious consequences, probably the most serious consequence, of emigration—the lack of parental control arising from the broken or dissipated family, the family whose father has to get out of the country and leave a broken home behind.
The increase in juvenile crime is only one of the serious moral repercussions of the emigration problem in Ireland, but I do not think that even that is the sole factor in its increase. If one reads the periodicals and the newspapers, including the Taoiseach's own newspaper, and goes to the cinemas and sees the films shown there—now, unfortunately, they are on the television screen—it would appear that the whole source of interest for the modern child, the growing child, appears to be based on violence of one kind or another. It even starts in the schools with the interpretation of history, our own history and world history generally, the brutality of one nation against another nation, the usurpation of power, the imperialism and colonialism of the different countries. The whole motif of existence in the lives of these young children as they grow up in school right through their adolescence into adulthood appears to be based on violence of one kind or another whether it is the story of our national attempt to gain freedom or the international picture portrayed in violence.
Probably the greatest evil of all is the evil influence in the newspapers strip cartoons with their portrayal of gangsters, gang warfare, murder, pillaging and looting under different euphemisms, always amounting to the same thing—violence exercised by one human being on another. The extraordinary thing is that we have come to accept all these things, this continuous unending portrayal of violence of one kind or another as an essential part of the whole of the life of our young people growing up. In the so-called entertainment world, violence is the thing which is most commonly portrayed. I would ask the Minister, in the use of his censorship, to ensure that the censors should continue their outlawing of the seventh deadly sin. Sex appears to be the only subject portrayed in its most blatant and objectionable forms, and I suggest that they add to this the sins of violence and murder.
To me it seems to me quite extraordinary that you can go into our cinemas and that the only thing you must not see—and quite rightly—is the sin of adultery carried out on the screen because it is believed to be something that is not to be allowed to be seen by our children; yet children can go to the cinemas seven days a week and see the crime of murder perpetrated, whether by cowboys or Indians, gang warfare, beatings-up of one kind or another, and murder. It seems to me that is one of the main sources of the general trend—the increasing trend—the acceptance of violence as the arbiter of disputes between people.
The attempt by young people to get money to advance themselves in life and to solve their difficulties appears to stem from this acceptance of violence—from the greatest violence of all, the acceptance of the war solution, between nations, to the solution of murder, between individuals. I believe that the Minister will agree with me that if he examines these different media of information and education— the periodicals, the newspapers, the strip cartoons in the newspapers, the comics, the television screen, the history books in our schools, and the violence in war films—he will see that therein lie the seeds of this violence, this disregard for life and this acceptance of criminal solutions for problems about which the Minister is so worried, and about which so many Ministers for Justice throughout the world are worried.
Then there are the imported English Sunday newspapers. The Irish newspapers within recent months appeared to have discontinued the strip cartoon depicting scenes of violence—blood running from one man's wounds in glorious technicolour on the back of the Taoiseach's own newspaper—but the English imported yellow Press still carries these disgusting stories of violence of one kind or another. Only last week in one of these papers The People there was a most shameful portrayal of a section of our people, the tinkers. Some people may despise them; I do not. They are still human beings and still part of our nation. It was a most disgusting portrayal in this Sunday paper with horrid details of gouging and kicking. It should not be permitted. That portrayal of violence should not be tolerated or permitted in any papers, imported or home produced, or in films.
This House seems to be obsessed with this question of prestige. Well, that would appear to me to be at least one way in which we can make a real contribution towards seeing that the way of life of our people is not misrepresented abroad. We certainly should not tolerate the circulation of papers such as those in this country where we have the right under censorship to forbid their circulation. I would ask the Minister to give some thought to this whole question of the use of violence for the making or increasing of circulations.
The use of violence and a decadent interest in crime is widespread not only here but everywhere else. I was amazed to read a well-known Socialist peer proclaiming his great interest in reading crime novels. It seems to me that is a most decadent interest, to be concerned with how one man kills another. Where it concerns children and where they have access to these very colourful portrayals of murder, violence, gang-warfare and malicious damage of one kind or another, it can only have one result—the increasing figures for juvenile crime with which the Minister is concerned.
I should like to ask the Minister if he has come to any decision about the extension of the franchise to the Garda Síochána. I do not know what the reason is for withholding this. It seems to me there is no good reason why they should be hand-picked from everybody else in the community.
I have been given to understand there is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in the Garda about the system of promotion. The Minister answered a question of mine in which he said he was satisfied that there is no serious injustice or unfairness in this question of promotion. I would ask him again would he try to ensure that if there is a genuine feeling amongst the Garda that there is a certain amount of favouritism, unfairness or injustice in the making of promotions, steps should be taken, as they can be taken, to see that the appointment board in relation to these promotions and appointments should be above suspicion, and that the Garda cannot have any justifiable belief that there is some sort of back stairs influence being used to secure appointments or preferments of one kind or another.
I am quite certain the Minister himself is well removed from anything of this nature, but I know from my own experience in the Department of Health that it was one of my most pleasant functions in the making of appointments that I could, as Minister for Health, say: "I have absolutely nothing to do with those appointments. They are under the authority of the Taoiseach through the Local Appointments Commission which is completely above board and suspicion." The result of that was that one was saved a tremendous amount of attempts to influence one. At the same time, through the operation of the Local Appointments Commission and the Civil Service Commissioners, it is now generally accepted by people going for professional appointments of one kind or another that they get a fair crack of the whip. If they are qualified, they will very likely get the appointment; if not, they will have no grievance and certainly no grievance against the Minister or the authorities concerned.
I do not think there will be any difficulty establishing some sort of tribunal which will give the Garda complete assurance that their case is conscientiously, carefully and fairly considered before a decision is arrived at. I could not imagine anything more dangerous than a dissatisfied police force. It must be a very important thing to try to ensure that the police force of any country is completely contented, that there is no dissatisfaction and suspicion among the Garda that some are doing better than others.
I should like to remind the Minister once again of the request I made earlier to him. Would he please consider taking powers to allow prisoners in our jails to go home at times such as Christmas for a short period? I understand he has not got such powers at present. I understand there is a problem when prisoners leave jail suddenly, just as there is when patients leave a hospital where they have been for a long time. It is quite extraordinary how unwilling people are to leave a hospital where they have been for a long time.
I understand there is the same feeling of fear, or presentment of insecurity of some kind or another, in the case of prisoners, even if it sounds very unlikely. I understand it is true that, when they leave jail, they have this feeling of uncertainty as to what the future holds for them. Of course, they are frightened of the likelihood that they will carry the stigma with them endlessly, making it difficult for them to get jobs, and that the extraordinary transition from the relative security of a jail to the complete insecurity of a penniless outside life is quite a strain on many of the prisoners. For many the week after they leave jail, if they do not get secure employment, is the greatest period of temptation for them; and they are likely to end up in jail again because they are unable to resist the temptation to return to the criminal activities of their past. Would the Minister consider the suggestion, and the practice adopted elsewhere, of allowing prisoners out for a limited period before they actually are discharged to see whether they can establish themselves in life outside jail before they are finally put out to try to earn their living with the tremendous burden many of them have of having had a criminal record?
