CRIME DEBATE:CRIMINAL JUSTICE legislation to close loopholes in sentencing, automatic remission and penalties for possession of blades and firearms has been published by Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan.
Launching the Criminal Justice (Violent Crime Prevention) Bill at the party’s national conference, Mr Flanagan said the Bill would enshrine a 25-year minimum sentence for murder, compared to the current average of 13 years.
The Private Members’ Bill “aims to break up criminal gangs by making it impossible for them to go about their daily criminal lives”, he said. The State was losing the war against gangland criminals because of a “host of serious defects and deficiencies in the criminal justice system”.
Mr Flanagan said there were 30,000 bench warrants currently outstanding and “there is no doubt in my mind that a number of the most dangerous criminals in this country have bench warrants out for their arrest but are going about their ways in the community unimpeded”.
The Bill includes court orders which would restrict the movement of gangsters and their association with certain people and allows for electronic tagging.
“Failure to comply with the terms of the order may result in arrest and up to five years behind bars,” the Laois-Offaly TD said.
Mr Flanagan also told delegates that the Bill “will increase the maximum penalty for unlawful possession of a knife from five years to 10 and for unlawful possession of a firearm from seven years to 10. It will also become an offence not to report lost or stolen firearms or ammunition.”
Hitting out at the Government’s crime strategy as a “sticking plaster” for a “serious wound”, he said there was one Customs boat, one mobile X-ray scanner and a handful of sniffer dogs for the entire coast. “Our smaller and private airports and our vast unpoliced coastline constitute a drug-smuggler’s paradise.”
He said drugs were the fuel that powered gangland crime.
“They pay for the guns and the bullets that murder innocent people. They pay for the bullet-proof BMWs and SUVs while the State refuses to pay for video equipment at Garda stations.”
Cllr Derek Keating (Lucan/ Palmerstown) said there was an urgent need to put more community gardaí in place, because of the major increase in anti-social behaviour, of people behaving in a threatening manner and carrying knives.
Senator Eugene Regan said however that “there is an attitude in the police that if they intervene they will make matters worse”.
Sometimes, he said, gardaí arrested someone to make it look as if they were doing something, but “they are back on the street within a couple of hours”.
The party’s victims’ rights spokesman Michael Darcy said victims of crime faced a double trauma, victimised by criminals and then all over again by the judicial process.
Ray McGadden, Dublin north inner city candidate, said one in 20 people was a regular user of cocaine.
There were major difficulties in getting access to rehabilitation services and a lack of preventive measures.
However Dublin South-Central TD Catherine Byrne believed the number of cocaine users was higher than one in 20 and that the drug was used mostly in nightclubs and pubs. Ms Byrne also pointed out that there were 14,500 people on different illegal drugs but only 40 detox beds in the State.
