Mattie McGrath on EU demands, dog theft and stalled justice bills

I too am happy to be able to speak on this bill here this evening, and I want to send my good wishes, first of all, and cater to the Minister for Justice herself, and wish her well, and indeed I am delighted to give time to speak on this bill, but it just strikes me, looking at the bill and reading and listening to the Minister, that when it comes to European masters, when they want something done, we jump, they say we ask how high, and we jump as high, because we have many pieces of legislation, languishing in the bowels of the Department of Justice at this stage, that are not implemented at any stage, I know you are new at a start, and I wish you well as well, and I often worked and debated here in other areas which are dead, and I wish him well, Minister, look, this piece of legislation, you know, any way we can stop fraud or crime, is very very important, and I support that, and I want to say as well, that I am supporting, and talk to Nocturne's amendment, and I want to compliment him and his group, and indeed, and talk to Tobin, for bringing forward a bill in relation to the theft of the canine, our canine friends, it has become a mean, and low, and very very difficult trauma for many families, especially during lockdown, and to see gangs going around, that they put one cable tie on a gate, or two cable ties on a gate, or three, so three dogs to be sold, for the next crowd to come along, to know where the dogs are, now they have different colour codes for different type dogs, and everything, and so it is very sinister, and very organised, and very profitable, obviously, and the fact that this is not a crime, so I hope the government will accept this amendment, that it will be, it's not a theft of property, which we have thousands of them every day of the week, but it's a theft of something very special, just think of the dogs, the man, one man, his dog, just myself, I love the sheep dogs, and I love to see them walking with sheep, and, you know, children, children, or blind dogs, or whatever, the bond that's built between the dogs, and their owners, it's just phenomenal, and they've been trained, and I salute the groups, the charities that are involved in training those dogs, as well, and there's a huge demand for autistic children, now more so than ever, when the schools are down, when the special needs classes aren't taking place, so anyway, we can strike that out, and so I hope that the government will be watching that, and will accept this amendment. Minister, also, in relation to, you know what I mean, to this piece of legislation, and European, the European Commissioner wants us to do it, and they have looked at it, and studied the documents we've got, you know, they have recommended two courses of action, and one is primary legislation, and here we are. When we're crying out for legislation, I raise the name of the Taoiseach. Legislation is brought in to put some bit of manners, or respect, on companies that are out there, a big supply company, utility companies, who are facing people. They can have six weeks of a moratorium, eight weeks, sorry, of a moratorium to be able to talk about standing charges. And I've been inundated all afternoon with calls from companies big and small in relation to legislation here, because we can bring in all this emergency legislation, but in the middle of a pandemic, we can bring in this legislation here, which is interesting to my mind, but that's a simple, a short piece of emergency legislation to be extended, that utility companies cannot charge people when their businesses are locked, closed. Now, the Taoiseach did tell me today the government didn't close any premises for the virus. Well, that's a new element of spin. I think we're going to compete thee now, because it was an act of this house. So my voter for the staff, we all did, and brought into it, and I heard you last, Concola, being very rigorous in your questioning, and rightly so, and we're able to do it. And we, by our acts here, to close down the house and give the Minister for Health inordinate powers to do what he liked, literally. And then the Taoiseach's hand up today, someone needs to pinch him and see him in the real world. Like he said, with no bank bailout. It's the government here. We cannot say, blame the HCC for closing St Bridges Hospital in Calgary or anything else. Blame somebody else to blame him. He is the Taoiseach. For a while, he was confused with the Tarnasher, which one was which, the Taoiseach or the Taoiseach or the Taoiseach or the Taoiseach or the Taoiseach, or who was Tarnasher, but at this stage, you should have known that he's the boss and the book stops with him. And the legislation for this house passed while Ministers are delegated roles to do just Cabinet collective responsibility. So I, for instance, Minister, or that's Concola, brought in a scrap and precious metal bill twice here before your time, actually, Concola, and again during your time. And a very important piece of legislation because right today, precious buildings, protected buildings, are being stripped of their lead, are being stripped of their droneocracy in Dublin, Georgian buildings and everything else. And worse than that, telecommunications lines. We almost had major fatalities in Limick Junction because of the line being stolen, copper wire being stolen for a kilometre outside of Limick Junction. But for swift action of linesmen and Ian Rodean men, there would have been head-on collisions. And that bill wasn't. It was almost the first one by Minister Shatter. We asked them to amend them and we amended it and brought it back another one. No. That was, and a few simple measures was the traceability. Anybody that was buying or selling scrap metal had to be, have a PPS number. You had to hold the piece of item that you bought for a specified period so that the Gardaí could find it. And it went back to the gold and silver and your PPS numbers. First of all, it was very lucrative. It would have been for the coffers of this chequeur, but there would also be traceability and time-front Gardaí could have done it. Rubbished. So we couldn't act on that. And now we can act because Europe wants to act on this. In spite of other countries in Jerusalem did act on this, on that area. And farmers, farm theft, farm buildings, farm machinery, farm equipment, and house owners, all those kind of valuable items have been taken in the stride and the best reservoir of, you know, artifacts. And some of the precious artifacts that some of us were on motorways put up artistic sculptures were sawn down, worn down with a gas torch at night and taken away. And they stopped at nothing. They stopped at late on churches of churches. So we didn't deal with that. There's lots of things we haven't dealt with. And white-collar crime is a big one, Minister. And it's a huge one. And, you know what I mean, we can see it going on. And we can see what the regulators in many areas here are not dealing with these issues. And we've seen whistleblowers in the past have been vilified. And, Minister, as you speak, the Department of Justice, actually, the prison service are going to hold interviews next week. And I've been contacted by concerned people about the interview process and the boards and the makeup of those boards. No response. It seems to be the Wild West do what they want. We also, I missed the debate on G-stock, and I'm sorry, Alaskan called me. He allowed me to say something on here because of the lack of people. Backbenchers didn't turn up, and you can't watch your debates. So it went daily as well. It's impossible. They want more time taking off those independents, but yet they won't turn up for the time. Again, G-stock and the Garda Ombudsman Commission before that, great, nice name, do some good work, seven years. But they need to be revamped, and they need to be refocused there because what I want every Garda to be held accountable, and these are some not very accountable, have been in the past, and I've had those issues myself with the Garda station in Dungarvan, County Waterford. But they need to be held to account. And I have often been contacted by guards and some retired now that were called to an accident, and they hadn't a squad car to go, or a squad van, and some deputies mentioned earlier about the lack of resources. And G-stock would land in the field in a helicopter, the G-stock investigation, because whether the member of Garda, she kind of involved in an accident on or off duty, they have those powers. I think that is totally extraordinary. We saw a case recently in the courts where G-stock took a Garda to the courts, and the judge lambasted him, and rightly so, I think. Garda was doing his duty. And next thing, G-stock found, that they'd bring this Garda all the way to the courts and vilify them. He was cleared, thankfully, and G-stock were remonstrated by the judge. So we need a review. We set up these bodies, quangos, most of them, and they get in there, and their board's on them, and there are two new members of the board today, I don't know who they are or what they are, more about them, but there has to be accountability, and there has to be a comeback. And there has to be some respect for the law as of the land, that some of these quangos get in and they just seem to be there. And the RSA, at the moment, are one of them. One of them. They're just doing what they like. People with licences, tests, with pure black adding of ordinary citizens. And there seems to be no accountability. I don't see the chairperson out on the television complaining about the testing. The test centre in Tipperary and Clonmillan, in my town, is the Wild West. Young people have been penalised. Penalised unfairly. Four tests were cancelled yesterday morning because of the frost. Despite the fact that driving instructors were able to drive, and the testers drove to work, and the people drove with their parents, who take a day off work. It is hard times. They bring their young person sooner by. And then, at two o'clock in the day, when the testers decided they were sick, to go home. And let people with appointments that they waited months for. Spent a fortune on lessons with very good tutors. And this is black adding of the highest order. And it's driving people to their brink. And could drive them over to top young people to try two or three times to do tests and get black added like that. It's not acceptable. And we've no, no, no, there's no redress or no place to go. So, there are many areas of legislation minister in your career as UNO minister you could look at in Ireland. We don't have to wait until the high masters in Europe say, hey, do this, we want this. We're wonderful Europeans. We're wonderful to do it up. And there are many areas in European law that you won't begin at all because they would suit the Irish citizens here. So, it's time that we served the people we were elected to serve. And we left our masters with, because when we wanted to bail out, we got little support and solace. So, there are many, many areas in the pattern of justice. I could go on for an hour, last concorda, but I won't, and talking about them. But, as I said, the scrap and precious metal bill tried gallantly twice to do it. I had the same with the, with the sulky racing bill. There's a murky industry there that we would want to touch. Dance around them. Go to my good.