I earlier spoke about the relationship between drink and crime. If we remember that we spent last year £1.2 million per day on drink and we spent less than half that on housing it shows there is something wrong with our priorities. I do not believe anybody will deny that excessive drinking is a contributory factor in crime. We must bear our share of the blame for some of the crime. We must remember that a large section of the population do not drink alcohol. The excessive drinking, therefore, among a small section of the community must be colossal.
Are we doing enough to prevent the abuse of alcohol? I am not trying to preach on this subject. I am talking about the abuse of excessive drinking. It is a great indictment of us that we spend so much more on drink than on housing when so many people are waiting for proper housing. It is unfair to associate the Minister for Justice with the housing shortage as it is not his job. I believe that if we could change the licensing laws to prevent the abuse of alcohol we would be doing a good job.
We also have to consider how easily wine can be bought by many unfortunate people in this city and throughout the country whom we see sitting on the city streets drinking cheap wine. I believe the situation is getting worse because every day we see more of them. Could the Minister devise some way to tighten up the sale of wine to those people? They can be seen early in the morning and late at night clutching a bottle of cheap wine. Those people probably need treatment. They are really breaking the law. I believe that eventually the Minister will be forced to take action.
I believe it is necessary to take action in relation to the sale of drink in supermarkets. They display the drink very temptingly. It is hard to see, without a change in the law, how the supermarkets can stop selling drink to those people. The checkout girls are so busy that they would not be able to identify whether the people buying the wine are over 18 or under it. Those girls at the cash registers with long queues of customers can do very little. They can only take the money for the drink from those people and let them go on their way. The Minister will eventually be forced to tackle this problem in the interests of the prevention of crime.
Bank robberies in recent years have become a factor of everyday life. The Minister yesterday gave some startling figures in relation to this. I know he is concerned about this because I have been in touch with him about it several times during the year and making suggestions as to how they could be curbed.
Most people say the banks should provide their own security, but I do not agree with that. The banks have a duty to do what they can to prevent robberies and to safeguard their staff and customers. This year several bank customers have been killed, staff injured and money taken. We now have bank managers' families being kidnapped and held hostage while the manager goes with the gangsters to open the bank. I suggested some time ago that bank managers should not be allowed to take the keys of the bank home each night. I suggest the keys might be kept in a garda or army barracks. The garda may not be prepared to take on this onerous job but the keys could be left in the army barracks. In the morning they could be collected by somebody known at the barracks. If we do this I am convinced kidnappings will stop and there will be a reduction in the number of bank robberies.
Post offices and people in their own homes are being robbed. The gardaí are doing their best to cope with this problem, which is not confined to this country; it is worldwide. These gangsters rob banks and then take a holiday in the Middle East while they plan their next robbery.
Private security firms are involved in crime prevention. I am not very happy about these firms because I understand they do not need a licence to set up in business and I do not know if there are any standards laid down to which they must adhere. It could happen that a man would start such a security firm with the intention of carrying out a number of robberies in the future. Therefore, I suggest these firms should be licensed to operate and should conform to certain standards.
Many of these firms are doing a very good job. Such firms have been established in most countries but Ireland is one of the few places where they are not armed. When I was abroad recently I was amazed to see members of private security firms carrying machine guns. That did not make me feel very happy. In America in the local drug store I noticed a private security man on duty carrying a machine gun. We do not want that here.
Our crime preventers are the gardaí backed by the people. We do not want members of private security firms going around carrying loaded machine guns. The Minister should look into the whole question of security firms to see what can be done to improve their services and to ensure that nobody will be able to use a security firm to further his own ends by possibly planning robberies. I realise the men working in these firms are running a risk every time they collect or deliver money. It is in their interests that I ask that we ensure that these firms operate under the highest standards possible and that they must be licensed.
I am tired preaching about vandalism. I do not know if it is on the increase or the decrease. I believe vandals are mentally sick. There must be some little kink which makes a person smash a telephone kiosk. A telephone could be the means of saving a life. Life belts along the rivers are stolen or the ropes are cut. This means that an unfortunate who falls into the river is denied a chance of rescue. Psychiatrists should look into this.
If the garda worked in co-operation with local residents' committees and people interested in preserving their area we would have a very happy organisation. I was at a recent residents' meeting and a garda gave advice on drug addiction—and a very good job he made of it. I do not know if we have a very big drug problem, but the biggest drug I know of is drink. We should encourage people to co-operate with the gardaí because, in the long run, they are the guardians of the public.
In this city there are many young people terrorising old people. Even if the old people know the names of these culprits they are afraid to name them because of possible retaliation. In this city where we have a housing shortage a number of houses had to be closed because they were vandalised by unthinking vicious young people. We might have a special section of the Garda to deal with that type of crime. In some cases the housing authority have to put up wire mesh on windows of the old people's flats so that they will not be robbed. There was one case where these brats stole the keys and charged ransom money for them. These people are anti-social and are much worse than some people convicted for robberies.
In the last ten years there has been a lot of political crime. I do not know how we should tackle this. Public representatives have a duty to ensure that by our every utterance we would not encourage anybody to use violence. People must be educated that we can achieve our aims by peaceful means. At the same time we must bring home to those responsible for a part of our country that any social injustices there must be removed. If in our society we have certain injustices, it is our duty to remove them and to show people that we will not tolerate violent methods. We can, with the brains God gave us, have a better society with social justice by peaceful means.
The sufferings of people over the last ten years have been frightful. The strain on the Garda has been colossal. A number of our gardaí have died as a result of this type of crime. We owe it to them and to the future of the country to take all possible steps against people who use violent means to achieve any aims. There are many degrees of violence. There is institutionalised violence which denies a person their rights, but a person shot dead callously in the street is something which cannot be taken lightly. John Donne said "When any man dies I am diminished, because I am part of mankind". In that he was expressing a feeling that we all share. We back the Garda in their battle against these people. They must be given every means to combat all crime in the best way possible. People must be educated to see that crime does not pay. I do not mean in the ordinary context that they will be punished for it but that it will not pay to hurt a neighbour, friend or relative. Crime must be seen as being abhorrent to us all. We must prevent it, because prevention is better than detection. However, if we cannot prevent it we must have every possible means available to detect the people responsible.
Young people are influenced by many things, particularly films and television. At home if a family are watching television and things become too bad they can switch it off. However, I was at a cinema recently and was appalled at the film being shown to over 18s. Films are made which would corrupt youth and drive them to crime. If they commit crime and are caught they are sent to prison. Should the people who make these films not be sent to prison? Should the people who show them not be admonished in some way? I know we have a censorship board but, while the censor does his best, he can only delete the very worst parts of the film. I do not condemn the youth but rather the people who are making money from these films shown both on television and in the cinema. We must educate the youth to ignore the rubbish shown on the screens. If these people do not have an audience they will stop making that kind of film.
Another matter is that of vice in the city. People generally laugh when one mentions prostitution. The sordid side is that, at a time when we hear so much about women's liberation, we are faced with the situation where we may have the start of a female slave trade. How many of these unfortunate women are there because somebody is making money out of them and terrorising them on to the streets? There is no glamorous side to it. I saw in a paper recently a statement from one of these people that one of their members had been murdered. In my constituency a resident told me that he had to leave his house at night to rescue one of these women who was being strangled by the person with her. It is no joke and there is nothing glamorous about it. I hope the Minister will provide a full Garda patrol in these areas. These unfortunate women—I do not condemn them—may end up strangled in a gutter. This happened not long ago. One was found and I am told there was also a second person. Let us get after the godfathers of prostitution—I am told they are there, although I have no proof of it—and put them where they should be, in prison.
One often reads in the newspapers of a person charged with a crime and then remanded in custody for a long time. If that person is innocent we are doing him a great injustice by allowing him to languish in prison for a long time before trial. I appreciate the difficulty of the courts in this and the difficulty of bail in all cases. I know a case where, if bail had been refused, a terrible tragedy would have been averted. I queried the case and was told that the judge could not refuse to give bail. The person involved was afterwards convicted of a hideous crime. The Minister should examine ways to shorten the remand period for a person before the courts and ways of ensuring that bail is only given in cases where it is fully warranted. We must ensure that no innocent person will suffer either by being refused bail or being incarcerated in a prison for a long time before his trial comes up.
I do not know whether our welfare officer service is up to scratch or not but I deplore seeing a ban-gharda on duty when she could be engaged in the sphere of crimes against women and children. I was one of the people who campaigned for the creation of the force of banghardaí. We had in mind at that time that they would deal with women and children in trouble. I urge the Minister to increase the force of Ban-Ghardaí and put them on this essential work. I know the Minister and the Garda have had a tough year and I hope that when we are discussing the Estimate next year we will have made further strides in the prevention of crime.
The prison system in other countries is causing great concern. It may be that there are so many prisoners. We will also have problems in that respect. A few years ago I visited some of our prisons and found them very unlike hotels. To deprive a man of his liberty by imprisoning him is a harsh measure but some men have to be imprisoned for the good of their fellow men.
I wish the Minister success with the proposed reforms and hope that they will result in a reduced crime rate.