I would like to contribute on the amendment.

Sentiment score: 0.36

I was following the debate in my office. I see this as a good amendment. I do not know if it is going to be accepted tonight or whether it can be factored in at a later stage. I join with what other speakers have said. There was a time when we were a more innocent country. People would set off on holidays and put the VCR under the pillowcase, pull the curtains and hope that no one would break into their house. How murky things have become since then, with drug dealing and the crime that goes hand-in-hand with it now having permeated everywhere. I have listened to a lot of the urban Deputies. There are urban parts of my county, but the problem has gone to every rural village as well. I recently asked some parliamentary questions about the Criminal Assets Bureau. It is doing fantastic work. There was a term I heard some years ago at a joint policing committee. People were pushing for what is called "mini CAB". In every single village and housing estate, there is some boyo with a fancy car in the driveway. He will have two or three holidays and watches like we have never seen before on his wrists. He is living a life over and beyond what anyone around him could afford. It is two fingers to the law; it is two fingers to his neighbours. People call to his house night after night, and they are not buying popcorn. We all know what is going on. It is happening in every single village. Our gardaí do a fine job, but they are not resourced enough to do all of this. In response, I got an interesting answer. It was a positive one. The Minister told me that there are now 620 gardaí trained up as divisional asset profilers. Beyond doing day-to-day policing and driving through communities, they are spotting these people living way beyond their means and report it to the Criminal Assets Bureau. The budget for CAB has gone up. The number of gardaí doing this has gone up. We need to move beyond the Kinahan-Hutch level crime we see on the front page of the Sunday World. In every community, there is an absolute scumbag tearing the heart of that community apart. As other Deputies have said, they are driving people to the point that they have to take their lives rather than having their life taken from them by somebody else. We need to add an additional layer of taking down these crime families who are in every single community. I do not know whether it will be accepted tonight, but what we are all speaking about here needs to become embodied in justice policy. I congratulate the Minister on his work to date. He has made a real stamp on the Department. I wish him continued success.

Sentiment score: 0.09