When the shouting stops.
Sentiment score: -0.15
The Tánaiste leads a party that identifies itself as the party of law and order. Fine Gael's website says, "Fine Gael is the party of law and order" and "We are the party that will ensure your family, your community, and our country is secure from crime". After 15 years of Fine Gael in government, for 14 of which his party held the justice portfolio, could he stand in Ballymun today and tell those he meets there that his party has ensured that their community and the families who live there are secure from crime? At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, a child of 11 picked up a loaded gun that had been discarded during a Garda pursuit and fired a shot into the air. It is by the grace of God that this child or another child in the vicinity was not killed. That is a truly terrifying incident and should be a watershed moment because this problem is much deeper than what happened in Ballymun and has been shaped by long-term policy choices on housing, public services and 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. Debts are sold between gangs so that families who pay once are forced to pay again. Of those 2,500 incidents, just 4% have resulted in prosecution. This is not law and order, but the absence of it. 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 were being targeted to pay off the drug debts of their children and that drug intimidation had become more lucrative for dealers than selling the drugs themselves. Teenagers are being used to distribute drugs the length and breadth of this country. The four national Greentown reports since 2015 captured this. The Montague report on Ballymun and the Connolly report on Dublin South-Central found that criminal networks in Ireland deliberately and systematically recruited children below the age of criminal responsibility not just because they could not be prosecuted, but because the conditions of their birth made them vulnerable to exploitation; that once the child complies even once, the obligations deepen and a refusal is met with violence and intimidation; and that children embedded in these networks are from the most deprived communities in the country. 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 Irish Penal Reform Trust, IPRT, report, put it to me simply. She said that, above all else, poverty was the one consistent factor in the grooming of children into crime. Poverty creates conditions, deprivation removes the options and the sole focus on criminalisation compounds the cycle. The Tánaiste cannot continue to claim that his party is one of law and order and avert his gaze from the factors that have led to children in this State being exploited and groomed into the most exploitative forms of criminality. Given what we have heard about the level of child criminalisation and exploitation and the level of crime in rural Ireland, can the Tánaiste still tell us that Fine Gael is a party of law and order? What is the actual plan to break the cycle of crime and deprivation, not only in marginalised communities, but across Ireland?
Sentiment score: -0.21
What happened in Ballymun on Tuesday was absolutely shocking but I chose in my opening remarks to 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 is happening in isolation. I am not sure if anyone in Fine Gael reads the Irish Farmers' Journal anymore-----
Sentiment score: -0.23
-----but in March, for example, farmers were forced to sell cattle to pay drug debts amid rising rural crime. What is happening in this State with drugs, drug-related intimidation and the exploitation and coercion of children into that crime is an absolute failure of this Republic. It will not simply be addressed by Fine Gael stating it is a party of law and order on its website. It must look into the underlying causes of the crime, the cycle that brings children into criminality and into the prison systems and to have that repeated ad nauseam. Also, why is this happening in communities that never felt it? There is something deeper happening and I do not believe for a second that the Tánaiste's Government is aware of it or has the means by which we can actually police it. We do not have enough gardaí in this State to police the level of crime and criminality that is happening, and we certainly do not have the understanding to appreciate what causes that crime.
Sentiment score: -0.33