I should like to take up the point on which the last speaker has concluded and to remind the Minister that when I put down a question last week to get some information on the way the Ballybough murder had been handled, I had no intention of trying to assume the responsibility which is the Minister's and that of the Garda authorities, nor had any other of the members of this House who have been making inquiries about it. The Minister must realise, being in touch as he is with the Force throughout the country, that there is unrest not alone among the general public but among the rank and file of the Garda because of the way in which this and other cases have been handled.
As regards crime detection, while the Minister read out an impressive list of the numbers of murders which have been detected over the years, nevertheless he must admit there are far too many of these cases going undetected. The last speaker referred to the fact that in many cases the Garda know who the person is but because they cannot definitely prove it, no prosecution is possible. I suggest to the Minister that if the Garda know and if there is no possibility of getting further proof, in the interest of justice, whatever proof they have should be brought before the court. It is ridiculous to find, as happened in one case a few years ago, neighbours putting up placards on somebody's gate and accusing him of committing a crime. That apparently continued until quite recently in that case and yet the Garda authorities were not prepared to take any action. In the interest of everybody concerned in cases like that, the matter should be clarified once and for all.
On the question of the Ballybough murder, it is quite true that the general public believe, and that the rank and file of the Garda believe, that nothing was done until it was far too late. The steps taken were not the correct ones and when eventually patrols started to stop cars in the evening and in the night, nothing resulted. In one case a patrol stopped a young man and his girl friend and tried to persuade them they were the people for whom they were searching, weeks after the murder had been committed when it was the easiest thing in the world to check who they were. That is not good enough. I myself was stopped late at night and I do not think I resemble in the slightest way either of the people in the identi-kit. I do not even wear a red coat.
The general public believe in regard to the Ballybough case that far too much information was given, that every assistance was given to those people to change their identity as far as possible and to prevent their being arrested and that this matter should have been dealt with in another way. I am not an expert on these things and I do not propose to offer solutions to the Minister. However, if it is true that when a serious crime takes place, no positive action can be taken by the Garda authorities, by the uniformed gardaí, until such time as the people who are at the top, who are in fact civilians, put on their deerstalker hats, get their magnifying glasses and start looking into the matter, then the matter is not being handled in the proper way.
With reference to the number of cases of housebreaking in the city and throughout the country, and, as the previous speaker mentioned, particularly of assault upon the person, it is true there is a great deal of unrest. In this case I am not blaming the Garda. Apart entirely from the blame attributable to parents who are allowing their growing-up children to do things they should not do, a lot of blame rests with the courts.
It is ridiculous that when cases are brought to court, somebody who has been before the court again and again on a series of housebreaking and other such charges can get away with a sentence of a couple of months or a suspensory sentence, given chances again and again. It is quite a common thing in this city that people who have been charged and who have succeeded in getting out on bail feel free to commit as many offences as they possibly can in the time at their disposal before they appear in court again. All they have to do is to ask that these additional charges be taken into consideration and they finish up with the same sentence as if they had committed only the original offences with which they are charged.
There are also cases of which I am sure the Minister is aware where children have gone into shops and grabbed money out of a till and the gardaí have reached the stage where they believe there is no point in charging them. If they are brought before the court, they get a pat on the head; they are told not to do it again and then they go back and do exactly the same thing again. The whole procedure of the courts must be changed.
Another thing which I think is wrong in court and which I believe must be changed is that where there is what is referred to as a State witness in connection with some minor charge of, say, breaking into a car and stealing property out of it, that person who may have been passing by and witnessed that, when he comes to court to give evidence, in many cases is cross-examined more by the justice than the person charged with the crime. A person who comes into court to make an identification should just do that and should not be subjected to that sort of thing. It does not help and it discourages people from giving evidence which otherwise they might give.
Car stealing has reached alarming proportions in the city, and all over the country, and people who have been involved in a series of car stealing offences have got away with a few months. The Minister may say the law is there and ask how can he deal with them at this stage. He could usefully point out that the present system for dealing with these offences has not succeeded. I have no objection to anyone getting a chance if it is his first offence, but if he continues to offend, the sentences should not be concurrent but consecutive. I believe that would help to solve the problem.
The other day I asked the Minister how many people from outside this State were charged with speeding, and the Minister said that no statistics of that kind were kept. He also said that as a man of Northern Irish extraction, he did not believe people from Northern Ireland were breaking the speed limit. I travel up and down 30 miles of the Dublin-Belfast road every day, and I know it has become a joke on that road. Most of the people from Northern Ireland who go through the villages on that road do not slow down. Ninety per cent of the people from across the Border go through them at any speed. There is no point in trying to prosecute them because they can go back across the Border and, apparently, we cannot follow them. There is no check to find if they come in here again.
The Minister will have to introduce special fines for those people. For example, a person may be in a hurry when going through the village of Swords, but he will slow down to 30 miles an hour, and five, six or seven cars with Northern Ireland or English registrations will pass him at 50 miles an hour. Ordinary drivers will not tolerate that situation, and the Minister will be encouraging breaches of the law if he allows it to continue. The present regulations do not seem to be of much assistance, but the Minister must do something about it to show the people who are doing that sort of thing that they will not get away with it. There are law-abiding people from Northern Ireland who will not break the speed limit. We have to obey their regulations. If the Minister is not prepared to take my word for it, I am sure he will have seen reports that interested people in the Northern counties along the Border were prepared to send a deputation to him protesting against the people who drive at any speed through built-up areas. I do not want to labour the point, but I feel it has gone beyond a joke now.
The Minister should also devise an improved method for detecting the speed at which people from both sides of the Border drive. There are some people who think they should not have to drive at 30 miles an hour. They think they are beyond the law. They are usually irresponsible young people, or people who have not more sense, and when driving through built-up areas, they are a danger to the public. The danger is increased because of the fact that the local people know there is a speed limit, and accidents are caused which would not otherwise have been caused.
I live on the seacoast near Laytown and Bettystown. The road is pretty good, but it is not good enough to take cars at a speed of more than 30 miles an hour. Especially on Sundays in the summer, when there is heavy traffic, there should be some method of detecting speeds other than the system we have at present. I know there are Gardaí on motor cycles patrolling the roads from time to time. There should be more of them, but at least they remind people that there is a speed limit and, if they exceed it, they will not get away with it.
Itinerants, or tinkers, as they are called, have been referred to. The situation that has been allowed to develop in this city over the past couple of weeks is a shame. In my opinion, the Minister has very little responsibility for it. At the same time, the Government as a whole must see to it that these people are not simply driven from pillar to post. No matter what we think of their way of life, they should be given a permanent camping place, and if they are not prepared to accept it, they should be dealt with very severely. I am not aware whether or not some of the people who have come on the scene are alien to this country. I understand there are rumours that that is so. We know that vicious attacks have been made by some people on respectable citizens of this country. There is no justification for those attacks, but the excuse given is that when they are driven from an authorised site, there is no other site to which they can go except another unauthorised site.
We have this problem to a much smaller degree all over the country. The time has now come when we should be prepared to provide them with houses into which they can move and live like Christians. The local authorities will have to erect houses for them and prevent them doing what they are doing. It is all right to say they do not do much harm, that they just put a few horses in a field, but they move into an area and camp beside someone's house, as they do in the country, and where they find the dirt and filth which they leave after them is a mystery. They need be there only a few hours and they leave after them boots, old clothing, bottles and a lot of unmentionable stuff. They also go from house to house begging, but that is not the worst feature. They leave a couple of hundred yards on each side of the roadway in an insanitary condition. I suggest they should be taken off the roads completely and put into houses, and then there would be no further question of looking after them, or having sympathy for them because they are on the road.
I am glad the Minister recently decided to put into operation the new Bill dealing with guns. That is long overdue. Because of its recent passage through the House, I shall not dwell on it, except to say I hope the Garda authorities will enforce the law in the strictest possible way. Airguns are terrible things. Airguns in the hands of children are terrible things. Airguns have done irreparable harm and damage, not only to animals but to human beings. I know that pampered pets will be able to hold on to them unless the Garda are strict. I want the law enforced in the strictest possible manner, and anyone found harbouring —and I think that is the correct word—or holding on to an airgun for a spoiled child should be dealt with in the way which the law lays down.
I was interested to hear the reference to ground rents. We have heard enough over the years about them. It seems to me that while everyone is prepared to talk about ground rents, and to have a commission set up to consider them, there is a vested interest and a hidden hand which ensures that no matter how much we talk, nothing ever comes of it. Again and again, there have been suggestions that ground rents should be abolished or terminated in one way or another, but in every case we come back to the situation where ground rents are not only continuing but growing. It was bad enough with the old landlord who held on to ground rents but it has now become worse with the new landlords, the people in this city particularly, who should have more sense, and who are branching out down the country buying up land in order to create ground rents and put an added burden on unfortunate people trying to provide houses for themselves.
The Minister is assured of the fullest support of the Labour Party in ending that sort of codology and also in ending the system whereby people who have gone out of the country for a long time—in many cases for several generations—and have gone as far away as South America, are still extracting a hefty income from ground rents in this country to which, in the first place, they were never entitled.