I thank you for having allowed me, belatedly, to raise this matter of the apparent helplessness of the Garda in the matter of joyriding on the roads. This matter is most urgent. I am not given to emotion or over-expression but this has so worsened in the last two days that I regret it was not possible for me to direct the attention of the House earlier to the fact that in Ireland at the moment the State is failing in its constitutional requirement to protect our citizens. I will quote Article 41.2º of the Constitution:
2º The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.
The State is not protecting the citizens. I say in all sincerity that there is a state of emergency in the country, particularly in Dublin. Last week the Minister for Justice brought before us a Bill referring to matters to contain subversion. The Minister had been told that money might have been made available to certain organisations known to subvert law and order and the Constitution. We took him on trust that that was the case and in a matter of hours we gave our approval and authority to proceed against those who held that money.
In the course of my short contribution, I hope to establish that I have evidence, not theory, to prove that all around us in Dublin the laws of this State are being disregarded blatantly. People are being murdered, maimed and disfigured but the Garda, that agency through which we give protection to our citizens, have turned their backs on it, not of their own volition but because they have instructions to turn their backs on it. I know as a fact that last Tuesday at 4 p.m. when the Garda were pursuing these gangsters and murderers they were given an order to withdraw. They were giving carte blanche to those people to proceed to murder and to maim, to do what they liked. I would not like to use the phrase “a laughable situation” but the hound has now become the pursued, the hare is now chasing the hound. Those young gangsters and murderers in their cars have told the Garda, “We are taking you on”.
A night or two ago in the constitutency of the Minister of State a Garda squad car had to turn off its lights and hide from those young gangsters who were pursuing them in BMWs or other powerful cars. If it were nothing more than what people describe as joyriding we would not be too alarmed, but we know those people could not care less whether they kill or maim or injure. Then it becomes a national emergency. I say as a responsible TD that my party in Government was probably as negligent as this Government in the matter of providing laws for the protection of the people.
There is an obligation on us to move immediately on this. I said earlier that I know the Garda have turned their backs on those murderers because they have been told to turn their backs. In this House in the last year we had the Garda being up as the Aunt Sally of the State with everybody throwing abuse, with all classes of accusations being hurled at them. Of course, they did not have the backing of the politicians here. They did not have the backing of their own superior officers or of the Attorney General or of the courts or of the Director of Public Prosecutions. We indulged in refined expressions of concern that the Garda had captured those people, that they had discovered that crimes had been committed. That is what they got here rather than congratulations on their achievements.
During the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill I said I was concerned about the £250 million of citizens' money that we invest in the Garda in the hope that we would get protection. At the same time we were encouraging any sensible garda to say: "I will get my salary at the end of the month but I will not do something that will put me in danger". We know that the balance is weighted slightly in favour of the Garda but we have people running in here to suggest that a garda did not do his duty in the way he should have. It was said that he was not obliged to have a commitment to his duty but rather to safeguard himself; and if and when a criminal was brought to court, out of moneys provided by the State, that person could employ the best legal brains in the country to demonstrate that the unfortunate garda had been remiss in the manner in which he discharged the letter of the law. The nature and the degree of the crime seemed to become irrelevant.
Why would any self-respecting garda put up with that? Why would he put up with the things that were said here on this Bill about lack of trust and of faith and confidence in the Garda, when he could accept that until such time as we introduce new laws we will not be given the protection which we had got when the Minister of the day and the superior officers and the Attorney General had faith and confidence in the Garda. In those days the balance would always weigh in favour of the garda who carried out his duties.
If I am a driver of a squad car and anything happens to me while I am speeding trying to capture one of these robbers or murderers there will be no compensation for me. If I step out of the car to chase a criminal and if I scale a wall and I fall off and break my leg or my neck there is nothing for me. If I injure the fellow whom I am chasing, there is something in it for him. We have brought the responsibility and duty of protecting our citizens to the point of nonsense, nurtured and encouraged all the time by the legal profession, whose bonanza it is to sit in their gowns wasting time down in the Four Courts discussing ridiculous points of law.
Enforcement of law no longer has any relativity to justice. We cannot afford that nonsense any longer, especially in the circumstances to which I refer. A lady shopping in Rathfarnham saw some fellows at her car in which her young son was waiting for her to return from shopping. She took them on as best she could and they left her with one finger gone. A schoolteacher friend of mine from my area, returning from an innocent card game, was run straight into by some fellows thinking, I understand, that it was a squad car. He was sent to his eternal reward and his family are left mourning. The Minister of State present sympathised with me and with that family.
These are cases with which we are all familiar every day. These fellows are sitting back laughing at us. We are concerned all the time about fellows who are subverting the State through the use of guns, and nobody condones that — that goes without saying. Here are fellows who are doing it through the mechanism of stolen cars. The Garda apparently have received instructions to close their eyes to it. They are told that it is dicey and there is no protection for them. If in circumstances where they are pursuing these people something happens, it might be awkward for the prosecution to defend it down in the court. The Attorney General or somebody in his office might be mildly embarrassed. The Commissioner or some high ranking member of the Garda Síochána might not be able to sustain the case.
In this country at the moment everybody is watching the Garda. They cannot put a foot astray. If that is the luxury that we think we can afford, so be it. However, let us not cod the citizens who are contributing out of their hard earned money what is required to afford a protection. Let us call in the Army who are better equipped, it would appear, to deal with this. There is no point in our pretending that this does not happen. I do not want to anticipate what the Minister of State will say in defence of this, but I am asking her to accept that everything that I say here is true and, if she wants confirmation, I shall refer her to any of the papers.
I am sorry that I did not hear until late in the afternoon that I would have the opportunity of dealing with this matter here. I did not collect all the latest references from our papers, but I have one here from the Evening Herald of 26 February 1985. It is stated:
Gardai were the targets of a seven-hour city-wide rampage by car thieves in Dublin today.
In the most co-ordinated attack yet by teenage gangs, a convoy of three stolen BMW cars were used throughout the night to face on-duty Gardai with a direct challenge.
During the rampage, the gang of masked car thieves rammed three garda patrol cars; tried to run down a foot-patrol officer; hurtled stones and rubble at another garda and used the stolen cars to stage a break-in at a city-centre amusement arcade.
This is not a Disneyland fantasy; it is not from any outlandish film on the television. That is a factual report from the Evening Herald of last Tuesday.
The Sunday Independent carried a litany of sorrows arising from those incidents. The Evening Press yesterday or the day before also reported on it. What are we doing? Are we going to sit with our usual sophisticated “tut-tutting” regard for statistics and do nothing about it? When it comes to our own doorstep we would say that we knew it was happening but, as always happens with death, we thought it only referred to our neighbour. We did not think it was going to come our way. “It happens with robberies, with murder. I did not think it would ever be my case.”
This is the position. Perhaps my regard for the members of the Garda Síochána has been overstated, but I do not think it has. I think that the Garda, men and women, are the finest body of people that we have and I want this House to accept it.
I want the House to accept from me that, with any group of people whether politicians, press, doctors or dentists, teachers or anybody else, inevitably you will get the manifestation of weaknesses that exist in mankind. All in all, we have a body of people who are conscious of their position and anxious to discharge their duties. "All great and worth-while things happen at the mart". For me, any garda who lives entirely by the regulations is useless. If he takes refuge in the regulations, he might as well stay at home. If he goes about on the street only concerned about seeing what he wants to see, something which will not get him into trouble, I do not blame him one bit, because that is the atmosphere and those are the conditions that we have created.
We know that even in cases where action is taken against gardaí that people who should be supporting them and rallying in behind them will run away and leave them to fight their corner. That is the worst type of recognition, the worst type of motivation that we can give to anybody, where we should be saying "You are there, charged with that responsibility. We know that in pursuing it you are dealing with people who are devious, who have available to them the best legal advice in the country, but we will protect you because ultimately, as far as we are concerned, the whole raison d'etre of laws and regulations and the Oireachtas is to provide, as is indicated in our Constitution, protection for our citizens”. The day we stop doing that is the day we should hand over to somebody else. The day we stop recognising that this emergency is with us — not imminent — is the day that we are failing in our responsibility towards the people who sent us here.
I am asking, for God's sake and the sake of those suffering people, that the Government which are charged with the responsibility at the moment will not talk about what did not happen in the past but will apply themselves to it now, to recognising it for what it is — as great a subversion of this nation as ever happened before.
It gives me no pleasure to say that the House can be sure that it will happen again within the next 24 hours. If plans are not there already, I hope that the Minister of State will take back to her Minister from this House the message that there is an urgency, an emergency, that unless we change in our attitudes towards those proven men and women who can do it if we respect them and give them the wherewithal, we must look to some other agency to bring, or attempt to bring, peace and tranquility to the people whom we represent.
