The views of this party were very clearly put by our spokesman when he said that we were not voting against this Bill on its Second Reading but we were hoping, with the co-operation of the Minister and those on the Government benches, that it might be possible so to amend this Bill as to make it acceptable to us.
Everybody in the House, it is fair to say, is concerned about law and order. Certainly I am concerned with law and order. I do not believe anybody should be allowed to commit lawless acts which will seriously disturb the lives of ordinary decent people, Deputy Fitzpatrick was quite right when he said that the fact the Government thought it was necessary to introduce penal legislation of this kind is a serious reflection on the Government itself. It is a reflection of the Government's failure during many long years.
It was this party which laid the foundations of the State and laid them fairly well. It was this party who set up the Garda Síochána and did not arm them. The Government have not armed them and the Garda themselves do not want to be armed because they know that force meets force. The more criminal an offence is made the more dangerous the people will be who attempt to commit that offence.
I have already said I am not able to make my way through the legal niceties of this legislation and decide what the civil law can deal with and what it is necessary to bring in the criminal court to handle, but it is all wrong to give the Garda Síochána the power of arrest without warrant. This is a serious situation. The greatest complaint which can be made about the law is that it is too slow, too tedious and too expensive as it stands, but surely it is possible to amend the law and make it more effective?
What is wrong with this country at the present time is that there are not enough houses and not enough jobs. The Government are not giving us a good example. We are not getting enough encouragement to make a real effort to do the right thing.
There should be a distinction between the different reasons for squatting but this Bill does not make any such distinction; it deals with all squatters. Why is all this lawlessness appearing now? Why has it not happened in the past? There are good reasons why it has not happened in the past. Let us take, for instance, fishins. How long have people been agitating because most of the valuable inland fisheries are owned by alien landlords? What have the Government done to bring about a situation whereby ordinary people are able to obtain access to these fisheries instead of just the rich, who are able to pay heavily for them? If the Government were sincere about this they would acknowledge that the people who are protesting have a grievance. They would tell them that it was the Government's intention over a period of years to buy out these fishing rights and they would include a certain amount in the Budget annually for this purpose. There has been no recognition of this fact and no attempt has been made to change the situation. The people are denied access to these amenities because there is no programme on the part of the Government to ensure that these rights are not in the hands of an exclusive few.
I would hate to see us arrive back at the situation which existed in the landlord days when it was treason even to tread on a farm and anyone who crossed a fence found himself in jail and arrested without warrant. I cannot understand the mentality behind this Bill. If a person misbehaves himself in a public house and starts a row, if the person who owns or runs the public house is not able to deal with him, he can call in the guards and the guards will throw the man out. I cannot understand why the same thing cannot apply to squatters. I have great sympathy with people, some of whom have been on the housing list for 15 years and are still waiting for a house. Deputy Dockrell did not make it any easier for me to make this case when he said that Dublin Corporation had a proud record in the provision of houses. It may be a fact that they built many houses in Dublin but no regard is being had to the fact that the people of the country are flocking into the cities and towns because there is nothing left for them in rural Ireland, because this Government have no policy for rural Ireland and have never had a policy to keep the people in rural Ireland and they are creating an enormous problem in the Dublin region. When a family in extreme conditions due to the fact that they are homeless move into an empty house—they do not want to break into the house, they do not want to commit an unlawful act but they have no place to go; through no fault of their own they have not been housed—it has the undesirable effect that the most deserving, if one were to house people on that basis, would not get a house first. One must have order and one must have a way to deal with it but I do not think it should be dealt with or could possibly be dealt with, and I do not think the people will stand for it anyway, with the severity that is proposed in this measure.
Deputy Dockrell referred to the unfortunate itinerants. I have seen attempts to remove itinerants from certain areas. I have seen them brought to court by the local authority and I have heard the justice ask the people: "Where are you going to put them?" When they tried to get an order to shift them they were just told to come back when they had some place to put these people. These people forcibly entered these grounds but the people sitting on the bench at present do not consider that they committed an unlawful act in the circumstances because of the background that is there.
Unfortunately, this Bill seems to be all-embracing and to be able to hit everybody with equal severity. I have not got anything like the same sympathy for the people who occupy houses for other reasons of protest. Like Deputy Dockrell I have a fair amount of appreciation of buildings of architectural merit and up to a point I defend those who protest very strongly when such buildings are knocked down but we must be reasonable about all this and we must be balanced in our outlook. Again the Government have not shown the concern that is necessary to meet the reasonable protests of people of this kind and they have driven them to worse protests. If they are really concerned and anxious to preserve certain buildings and certain streets and facades why do they not pinpoint them? Why do they not list them and say: "This is it and there can be no change from this" and then carry out the law? This has not been done. This bad example of lawlessness has started at the top. The decisions of the planning authority, who have the right and the responsibility to give planning decisions, have been thwarted on numerous occasions. Their decisions have been thwarted to suit the tacateers and the racketeers in this city, and to facilitate them. There is no doubt about that. People have seen themselves being evicted from houses and driven here and there simply because certain developers decided to buy up the property where they lived and surround them and tell them to get out. Talk about fixety of tenure. One has very little rights when this sort of thing is happening and allowed by the laws of the land.
Again, if one looks at the trouble that started on lands owned by foreigners the same thing applied. There was this forcible entry, burnings and everything else brought about again by the failure of the Government to introduce effective legislation in time to prevent foreigners from coming in here and getting possession of these farms. Even the law introduced after many years of agitation from the Opposition is still not effective and can be side-stepped and is being side-stepped.
In those circumstances and with that sort of background it may be necessary to introduce some form of more effective legislation but let it be known to everybody that it is because of the failure of the Government in so many departments and because of the hopeless example they have given that this type of legislation is necessary.
It has been pointed out already in this debate that in England where there is quite an amount of forcible entry and squatting they did not introduce this sort of legislation and they apparently are able to deal with it and it has not been necessary for the best part of 50 years in this country. If we had more indication from the Government that they are making the best possible effort to meet the situation of the homeless people and to meet the reasonable protests of people who are trying to correct wrongs this sort of legislation would not be necessary. There will always be the few who will have to be dealt with and dealt with fairly harshly.
Deputy Dockrell mentioned the unfortunate fact that we have lawyers on both sides of the House disagreeing on the type of legislation that is necessary to deal with a particular situation. It does not make it any easier for those who have not got legal training to decide who is right in this regard. There is a considerable amount of disagreement. The belief of the people in this party is that it may be possible on Committee Stage so to amend this Bill as to make it acceptable but they condemn the Government and the Minister that this type of legislation should be considered necessary and they blame them for the reasons that have brought it about. The discontent that exists in this city is largely due to the failure of the Government to provide sufficient houses for the people, due also to the fact that speculators and racketeers have been allowed to buy up property and demolish it before the eyes of people who have not got a roof over their heads and also because we have not got sufficient gardaí to control things when they start to go out of hand. All of us have protested against this from time to time. This is an age when everybody works a shorter day and where every employment requires more people to do the same amount of work. In the Garda Síochána there are far fewer people to do the same amount of work or a greater amount of work and it is a greater amount of work mainly because of the great aggregation of the population because of the flight from the land and the fact that nobody wants to stay in rural Ireland because there has been no policy for rural Ireland and the people refuse to accept the situation any longer.
Our policy on this Bill is quite clear. We will not vote against it on the Second Stage in the hope that we will find the Minister to be reasonable. We are accepting his assurance in the last paragraph of his statement where he himself does not try to pretend that this is a measure that cannot be drastically improved in the course of the Committee Stage. I hope that attitude will be obvious when we get into the part of the Bill where it can be tested but we have unfortunately come up against attitudes on the part of individual Ministers where they reject everything that is put forward simply because it is put forward by the Opposition feeling it cannot be right. Any Minister who comes into this House with that sort of attitude can expect to be opposed every inch of the way. If this Bill goes through the House in the form in which it has been presented we will have more trouble in this country than ever we had before. One might as well arm the police. This is the sort of opposition which the Minister will get to the Bill. I hope that the Minister will see, on reflection, that section 4 is unacceptable to the people.
Another thing struck me as rather peculiar about section 2. Section 2 deals with the offence of forcible entry on land or a vehicle. It reads:
A person who forcibly enters land or a vehicle shall be guilty of an offence unless—
(a) he is the owner of the land or vehicle, or
(b) if he is not the owner, he does not interfere with the use and enjoyment of the land or vehicle by the owner and, if requested to leave the land or vehicle by the owner or by a member of the Garda Síochána in uniform, he does so with all reasonable speed and in a peaceable manner.
What will happen to the inspector who goes down from the Land Commission and forcibly enters a man's farm and from that day forward the man cannot sell his farm or offer it for sale, nor can he raise money on it? The inspector sterilises that holding from the day he puts his foot on it. How will he be affected by this section? There is no mention here of lawful entry. As the law stands, he is entitled to enter under the 1965 Act. He will now obviously become a criminal, if this piece of legislation goes through the House, because he is certainly going in without the owner's consent and he is certainly interfering with the use of the land and property by the legitimate owner. Section 2 also requires a re-examination by somebody capable of doing it. I am satisfied with the various points put forward by our spokesman, Deputy Tom Fitzpatrick. This is a piece of legislation with which we disagree completely. We do not propose to vote against it. We hope to be able to amend it at the Committee Stage in order to make it acceptable in the circumstances in which this country now finds itself, as a result of the Government failure and neglect.