Gary Gannon: Fine Gael's Law-and-Order Claim Under Fire

Tánaiste, you lead a party which identifies itself as the party of law and order. Fine Gael's website says, and I'm going to quote directly, Fine Gael is the party of law and order. We are the party that will ensure your family, your community and your country is secure from crime. Tánaiste, after 15 years of Fine Gael in government, 14 of which your party held a justice portfolio, could you stand in Ballymun today and tell those you meet there that your party has ensured that their community and the families who live there are secure from crime? On Tuesday at 3pm in the day, a child of 11 picked up a loaded gun that had been discarded towards the Garda Pasú and fired a shot into the air. It is by the grace of God that this child, or no other child in the vicinity, was killed. That is a truly terrifying incident and it should be a watershed moment because, Tánaiste, this problem is much deeper than what happened in Ballymun and is a depth shade by long-term policy choices on housing, on public services and on community investment. Since 2021, there have been over 2,500 recorded incidents of drug-related intimidation across this state. Arson attacks linked to drug debt have quadrupled in four years. Debt sold between gangs so that families who pay once are forced to pay again. And of those 2,500 incidents, just 4% have resulted in prosecution. Tánaiste, that is not law and order. That is the absence of it. And this is no longer just an urban problem. A Garda sergeant and a crime prevention officer in Galway told a community meeting that decent, hard-working families across rural Ireland are being targeted to pay off the drug debts of their children and that drug intimidation has become more lucrative for dealers than selling the drugs themselves. Tánaiste, teenagers are being used to distribute drugs the length and the breadth of this country. The four national Greentown reports since 2015 captured this. The Montague report in Ballymun, the Connolly report in Dublin South Central all found that criminal networks in Ireland deliberately and systematically recruit children below the age of criminal responsibility, not just because they cannot be prosecuted, but because the conditions of their birth make them vulnerable to exploitation. That once a child complies, even once, the obligations deepen and the refusal is met with violence and intimidation. That children embedded in these networks are from the most deprived communities in the country. Today, up to 1,000 children at any given time across the state are under the coercive control of criminal adults. Clare O'Connor, one of the researchers behind the most recent IPRT report, put it to me simply, Above all else, poverty is the one consistent factor in the grooming of children into crime. Poverty creates the conditions, deprivation removes the options, and the sole focus on criminalisation compounds the cycle. Tánaiste, you cannot continue to claim your parity to be one of law and order and avert your gaze from the factors that have led to the children being exploited in this state, being groomed into the most exploitative forms of criminality. Tánaiste, given what we've heard, given the level of child criminalisation and exploitation, given the level of crime in rural Ireland, can you still tell us that Finnegal is a party of law and order? And what is the actual plan to break the cycle of crime and deprivation, not only in marginalised communities now, but across Ireland? Well, thanks very much to Deputy Gannon. Firstly, I want to join with him in acknowledging the huge sense of trauma, fear, disgust, shock that has been felt in the community of Ballymun, and I think felt by people right across this country as well, but nowhere more acutely than Ballymun, because as the Deputy rightly says, on the 28th of April, a man armed with a handgun was seen near Ballymun Garda station, where a second man was being detained. Both are suspected of being involved in an ongoing feud. Garda approached the man with the firearm, he ran away and was pursued, and threw the gun into bushes as he made his escape. And that gun was then subsequently picked up and fired by a child around 11 years of age. Thank God no one was injured in the shooting, but as you say, it was for the grace of God that nobody was as well. A short time later, two men arrived on an electric bike and took the gun away, but the weapon has still not been recovered in spite of intensive searches by Gardaí and by armed units of An Garda Síochána. I'm conscious that two males were subsequently arrested, a man in his 20s and a teenager, in connection with the incident, and both have been detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. That is law and order. When a crime is carried out or an alleged crime, people should be detained, arrested, questioned. I believe the man in his 20s is still being questioned in connection with the incident. The teenager has been released without charge pending a file being issued to the Director of Public Prosecutions. I know Minister O'Callaghan has been briefed by the Gardaí on the circumstances concerning the incident in Ballymun. I'm aware, obviously, that there have been arrests, and I don't want to over-comment on that part, but I do want to, and I know jointly you and everyone in this House, in asking anybody with any information in connection with the investigation to come forward, either to the local Garda station in Ballymun or, indeed, to the Garda confidential line, where any information they have will be treated with the utmost confidence. I do want to say to the community in Ballymun, at the end of February, there were 268 Gardaí assigned to Ballymun district. Of those, 160 were assigned to Ballymun Garda station, and since 2024, 34 probation or Gardaí have been assigned to Ballymun. Now, to tackle some of the deep-rooted issues which have existed over many years in the community, I want to acknowledge that the Ballymun Implementation Board was established in 2024 by the Department, by my colleague Minister McAtee. The board is led by an independent chair, it's hosted by Dublin City Council, and it's bringing together relevant social services providers, the Gardaí, to work together with community leaders, local business leaders. We've provided funding of €200,000 through the Department of Justice to help with the running of that Ballymun Implementation Board. I think it would be useful for us to have further engagement with them as a government, in terms of concrete steps that we can make. On the issue of children being coerced into crime, we did specifically change the law in relation to this. I think this is a particularly disgusting and heinous crime, where anybody would solicit or coerce a child. And while you do make the point that this is often in the most deprived communities in Ireland, the drug use is often not in those most deprived areas. It's happening in so-called middle-class areas, Middle Ireland, where people are snorting a line of coke at the weekend, not thinking of the devastating consequences it's having on communities. And that action should be called out too. Honestly, what happened in Ballymun on Tuesday was absolutely shocking. I chose, in my opening, to actually widen it beyond simply Ballymun, because I recognise the pattern. There will be an incident that captures public attention in a particular area, and then we will talk solely about that one community, as if this has happened in isolation. Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone in Fine Gael reads the Farmer's Journal anymore. In March, for example, farmers forced to sell cattle to pay drug debts amid rising rural crime. Honestly, what's happening in this day in relation to drugs, drug-related intimidation, exploitation and coercion of children into that crime, is an absolute failure of this republic. It will not simply be addressed by putting a party of law and order on your website. It has to go into the underlying causes of the crime, the cycle that brings children into criminality and into the prison systems, and then repeat ad nauseum. But then also, why this is happening in communities that never felt it. There is something happening deeper, and I do not believe for a second that your government is aware of it, or has the means by which we can actually police it. We don't have enough guarantee in this state to police the level of crime and criminality that is happening. We certainly don't have the understanding to appreciate what causes that crime. Firstly, I fully appreciate that you're making a point broader than Ballymun. I just obviously wanted to acknowledge the trauma in Ballymun and point out that there's a structure there that I think government should harness to try and support the community at this time of particular acute challenge. I would make the point we've taken a number of initiatives to try and tackle deprivation in the country. I can think of one only as recently as last month with the rollout of Debt Plus, targeting schools in our community, not just the most disadvantaged, but the most disadvantaged within those most disadvantaged. I think you are right though on the broader point of something going on in society, and it's not just in a certain small number of communities. Drug use in this country is now widespread, and this is a point I really hope we can join across the political divide in making. There needs to be an understanding in society, in everyone's home, in every community, in every pub in Ireland, in every social setting in Ireland, that the taking of illegal drugs in your community is not a victimless crime. Somewhere along that chain, before you snorted that line of coke or took that pill, there's potentially a child being brought into a life of crime. We can't avoid that or sugarcoat that anymore by just thinking this is an issue confined to certain communities. Nearly all communities are now complicit in this harm, and we need to have a much less tolerant approach to the casual taking of drugs.