Michael McDowell
National University of Ireland · Independent · Ireland
“Then I think of this particular Chamber where people are polite and kind to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There is no baying or shouting down or whatever. It is a great tribute to the Seanad staff that that spirit continues to exist in this House.”
“I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee.”
“I am one of the people who disagrees with the substance of that report. We have to have a real solid debate on it here in this House, not merely a cursory one. It is an issue of fundamental importance. It cannot be avoided, one way or the other. Whatever your views are on it, it needs to be thrashed out.”
“Although coming up to the end of this term we are rushing things through, and the guillotine is well-oiled and slicing this way and that, we have a lot of work to do in the autumn.”
“The people who did that were brought before the International Court of Justice and condemned and imprisoned. If Ireland does not clearly state that there are to be consequences for people who do things like what Mladić, Milošević and Karadžić were brought to account for, if we are incapable as a State of publicly saying that what Secretar…”
“If we cannot, as a State, say publicly to Rubio, "Hands off the International Criminal Court", when they were quite happy when the people who did the 7,000 murders in Srebrenica got their just desserts, but when there is any suggestion that what has happened in Gaza, with 70,000 innocent people killed by aerial bombardment and land bombar…”
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“By a happy outcome, the same contract killer died in a motor crash before he could carry out his work. One would believe that he came from an EU country but we do not know that. I do not see how my privacy rights, my right to dignity as a human being or the power of Big Brother are in any way involved if they can prove that four years ago, I travelled to Warsaw because a record was made of it for immigration law purposes and nor do I believe that any asylum seeker has any legitimate reason not to have their means of access into this State easily verifiable by data that can exist for one purpose but cannot be used for another purpose.”
“The funny thing is that we made the point at that time, through the then Attorney General – the late Rory Brady SC. He challenged this regulation as an unnecessary interference in our perfectly reasonable arrangements in Ireland and he was slapped down by the European Court of Justice. Later on, however, the same directive was invalidated by the same court because it was not sufficiently protective of people's privacy. If you are coming into Ireland as an immigrant or if you are getting on an aeroplane, or a ferry for that matter, to come to Ireland, it is no great interference with your privacy rights that a record is kept of that event and is accessible to investigation at a later stage. The Minister has recently been made aware of a contract killer coming into Ireland, apparently with a view to killing somebody in Ireland.”
“In those days, the Irish phone companies, because of the Statute of Limitations and because people could contest bills and dispute whether they were being charged correctly or incorrectly for use of telephone communications, kept their data for six years. Some bright spark in Europe decided if we are going to have a rule that everybody must do this – even though nearly everybody was doing it – we are going to say that as the countervailing protection for the privacy of individuals that after two years they must all be got rid of. What is the sense of that? If somebody can keep my phone data for two years, I do not see how my rights as a citizen to my good name, privacy or anything else are in any way advanced by requiring their destruction after two years and requiring that the law be changed to that effect.”
“We cannot say this individual claims he is from Somalia and that he came from England but we believe that the evidence is there to show that he came a totally different way and that he is not telling us the truth. All of that is ignored and made unusable out of what I think is a false theory of keeping Big Brother under control. We can go back to the hugely controversial issue that surrounded the Graham Dwyer trial. When I was Minister in the Department of justice, some gratuitous activist in the EU decided that it would be a great thing if all member states of the EU were obliged to keep phone records. That was fine. I would not mind that too much but then it was decided that as a countervailing provision for that, they were all obliged to get rid of them after two years.”
“I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining that. I feel a sense of disappointment on hearing that the information is there but it cannot be used for immigration purposes or for the purposes of the verification of asylum claims. It is purely restricted to the particular cases mentioned. It strikes me that if the EU is serious – sometimes I wonder if it is – about asylum seeking as a mask for breaching immigration law right across the European Union, that in putting in the kind of safeguards the Minister has spoken about, such that everything has to be destroyed after six months, Ireland does not have access to what Luxair or whatever airline it was in the case of Luxembourg that the Minister outlined, saw and took a photocopy of and were required for some purposes to keep.”
“Is there actually a record, or will there be under this regime, if implemented, including photographs or photocopies of passports, with a view to determining whether the person who has come to Ireland to go to the UK to claim asylum has travelled through a safe country? That is a question a lot of people wondered about in the aftermath of the Belfast disorder.”
“I was interested to see that this gave rise to some apprehension about closing the Border or having a closed Border, given that the Minister has stated that the great majority of the bogus asylum-seeking traffic seems to be going from the UK to Ireland via Belfast. Is it the case that airlines will have to keep a record of the passport of a person boarding an intra-EU flight? If somebody gets a flight from Paris to Dublin, will that person's photograph and identification document be recorded somewhere and be available to the Irish authorities to check? The point that occurred to me about that side issue in the Belfast disorder was whether there is some check at Dublin Airport where a person like that is flying from Africa to Paris to Dublin and intends to go to Belfast.”
“These amendments relate to data collection. While I disagreed with Senator Higgins about face coverings, I do not want it to be understood that I disagree with her in relation to the procedure we are following today. This particular set of very elaborate legislative measures being introduced by the Minister should not be introduced for debate on Report Stage in the Seanad in circumstances such as we have now, even if they have been recommitted for discussion. I have some questions for the Minister on these provisions. We were told, whether it is true or not, that the perpetrator of the knife attack that happened in Belfast had travelled from Somalia or Sudan via Paris to Dublin and then onwards to Belfast.”
“I strongly think that people are missing the point, which is that if you are on the receiving end of mob violence or the threat of mob violence or intimidation from continuing to occupy your home or your residence by effectively a mass picket outside your house, as happened in Belfast, one of the things the Garda should be in a position to do is to be able to deal with people who do not appear to have a lawful excuse or reason for wearing face coverings and are behaving in a manner which gives rise to a reasonable apprehension for the safety of other persons. The gardaí should not simply be required to stand there, watch all these people and do nothing about it and not interfere in any way. That is my view about the matter.”
“Although I presume that a garda can arrest somebody who does not comply with the direction, I do not know what happens when you arrive in the police station wearing your Ku Klux Klan hat, or hood, but there would have to be a removal of it at some stage to identify the person. I think that this measure is reasonable.”
“There is also the ingredient that there must also be a reasonable apprehension that the purpose of this behaviour is going to prejudice the safety of persons or the safety of property or the maintenance of public peace. I am on the Minister’s side in relation to this matter. I do not think that anybody who has religious or health grounds has anything to worry about in relation to this matter. I do not think that people who want to maintain their anonymity and who are otherwise not behaving in a manner that is threatening the safety of others or the safety of property or the maintenance of public peace will have their rights intruded on either.”
“In the absence of reasonable cause, any prosecution will fail. Second, we are faced with a situation where a person wearing the face covering should not have lawful authority for doing so or a reasonable excuse for doing so. Those are two things that I think will be very protective of people who want to simply remain anonymous on some occasion. There is a fine line between 50 residents of Ranelagh standing outside a black person’s house with face coverings, on the one hand, and a mixed group of people standing outside a large employer’s premises protesting about something the large employer is supposed to have done, and seeking to remain anonymous. There is a fine line between the two situations.”
“I was listening to the discussion on this amendment and I must say that there was an air of unreality to it in my view. Yes, Muslim women who wear particular face coverings are one category of society. So too, though, are people who congregate outside a Muslim person’s house wearing face coverings in a manner threatening to that Muslim family. One only has to look, and this is what struck me, to what the Ku Klux Klan did in America. I do not think they were concerned about their health, their religious beliefs or any of those things. They wear those face coverings solely to intimidate and to frighten people who they intend to exclude or whose rights they intend to trample on. The point I would make in favour of this amendment is, first, that a direction by a member of An Garda Síochána must be based on reasonable cause.”
“Unless and until we radically change our local democracy laws, measures such as this to create additional revenue streams are unjustified and counterproductive and proceed on the basis of the untrue assertion that tourists do not contribute to the local economy on which Dublin City Council depends.”
“Do we want to have this kind of additional charge made to create a fund which, as Senator Fitzpatrick states, has to be ring-fenced? I do not believe in this ring-fenced nonsense. I know what will happen. Just like the local property tax, it will be taken into account in the annual disbursement of funds by the Custom House to the various local authorities. The case for this has not been made. The case for an additional taxation measure of this kind being handed to local authorities has not been made. The real kernel of the problem with local government is that we do not have local democracy. Rather, we have local administration. Councillors, to whom Senator Fitzpatrick paid such a generous tribute, are, in fact, not really in charge of the activities of Dublin City Council.”
“I look at the council's failure to engage in proper constructive planning in the city centre, and then I am asked to believe that all of this makes economic sense. The levy - and it depends on whether it will be €1, €2, €3, €5 or €10 per bed per night in Dublin - is supposed to ensure, in Senator Fitzpatrick's terms, that visitors pay for the upkeep of the city they are visiting. They are already paying for it in vast sums just as the people who go to Killarney or Tralee pay for the viability of what happens there. Just take them out of the equation and see who is paying for what. Tell the hoteliers in Killarney, Tralee or wherever that their customers are not paying for what happens in those places. We are supposed to believe that tourists are somehow freeloading in Dublin, a place where hotel prices are already massive.”
“We are told that €10 million euro is going to be spent between now and opening of the new building in refurbishing the old building the council has committed to demolish. What kind of people are those involved that they think they can get away with spending more than €500 million on new offices for themselves because they say that it would cost €500 million to make their existing offices compliant with European climate emissions targets? I find all of this grotesque. I look the amount of dereliction across Dublin city. I look at the failure of Dublin City Council to enforce the laws in relation to dereliction. Some of the properties it owns are derelict. Some of those it has acquired are derelict.”
“In addition, it proposes to provide workspace for 2,800 employees at its new offices in circumstances where many of those who observe what happens in the existing offices wonder how many of the staff actually work from home at any given time. That is the way Dublin City Council is working - or not working. Even more incredible is the council's attention to spent €600 million on this new town hall. It will also have to spend God only knows what on the redevelopment of the Wood Quay site. Even demolishing it will cost many millions. Building anything new there will cost even more. Then we will be back to what happens to the remains of the Viking settlement underneath it. All of this has been left up in the air.”
“On top of that is the almost incredible news that the council's offices on Wood Quay, which were erected in very controversial circumstances 30 years ago, are to be demolished. The reason they are be demolished is, we are told, that somebody has worked out that it would cost €500 million to make them compliant with EU targets for zero-emission buildings. Somebody invented that figure, which has been put out there to justify what the council intend to do instead of making its offices habitable. The council decided to buy a half-completed structure at a derelict site at Camden Yard on Kevin Street approximately half a mile from its existing offices and build new offices there.”
“I am wholly opposed to this because of my experience of what it actually means in this city. The reason for my opposition is because Dublin City Council is, I regret to say, a bit of a financial disaster area. It is spending its huge budget of €1.6 billion every year. Last year, in a cynical deal designed to get Fine Gael the lord mayorship, it decided that it would increase local property tax by 15% in the context of the discretionary reduction that councillors are allowed to use. Right across the entire area of its functions, the council seems to be failing. The streets are in a very poor state of repair. The amount of additional social housing being provided by Dublin City Council is very poor. The state of repair of much of their existing housing stock is very poor.”
“Going back to what happened after this head was approved by the Government – and I am glad to hear it was after it – and the arrogance of people who think they can go on radio and television and say they will bring the Government to its knees, no, people sitting in the cabs of lorries have no right to bring the Government to its knees. They have no right to wander around the country trying to assert that they themselves are somehow the equivalent of government with no mandate of any kind whatsoever. I will not go further but a lot of them were given plenty of platforms to articulate the view that they had a mandate to bring the Government to its knees. How mistaken, how anti-democratic, how anti-republican and how contrary to the rule of law all that was needs to be thought about repeatedly.”
“Anybody who thinks that it is in any way remotely correct that the two Houses of the Oireachtas should authorise in advance every single deployment of the Defence Forces in aid of the civil power is, in my view, mistaken. The Minister for Defence operates through the Department of Defence, the military commands, and through the Defence Forces regulations in a highly regulated way. This section proposes that the Minister has a duty as a member of the Government to assist the Government in the maintenance of the security of the State and to maintain the authority of the Government collectively. Anybody who thinks that they can usurp the right of the Government to protect us collectively is deeply mistaken.”
“There are things that An Garda Síochána can do and there are things it sometimes may not be able to do, whether it is a search for the body of Michael Gaine, confronting the Don Tidey kidnapping or confronting other threats which existed. It was not just a matter of Concession Road outside Castleblayney. I can tell the House that every single reservoir in the Dublin region was under military guard. Sewage treatment plants were under guard. Electricity substations and generating stations were under military guard, along with the airport and places like that in the 1970s. The Government at the time did not have to come into this House and seek authority in advance for doing what is necessary to uphold public safety.”
“I am sometimes very critical of lawyers in particular - I put the Judiciary collectively into this basket - and legislators who somehow deny that the executive power of the State is of equal importance with the other two. The executive power of the State is dealt with in the Constitution on an equal basis. A lot of people want to claw back from the Government any discretion, and want to try to make it subject to, first, statute, and, second, judicial supervision with a view to effectively saying that the executive power of the State is a residual power which is unimportant. When push comes to shove and in an emergency, the Government, the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána must be available to uphold the civil authority of the Government.”
“We just have to look at what could happen in Northern Ireland and in various other scenarios to understand that the unexpected cannot be predicted. I will go back to a point that I want to emphasise. The Constitution says that "The Government shall meet and act as a collective authority, and shall be collectively responsible for [all] the Departments of State" under its remit. The notion that the Minister for justice and the Minister for Defence can, effectively, mount a coup on the phone is simply fanciful. They would not last a minute if they did that without the consent of the rest of the Government for what they were doing. We have to remember that there is a legislative power, an executive power and a judicial power.”
“I am interested and pleased in a way that the Minister has been able to inform the House that this did not arise from the petrol strike. That is encouraging. It is very interesting that this was being considered beforehand, in any event. I believe, and I know this from such connections as I have with the Defence Forces, that they are very conscious of operating within the rule of law. The Defence Forces legal service is an elaborate organisation, which takes its national and international obligations very seriously. I have no doubt that the Defence Forces view it as important that what they do in the public sphere, particularly in aid of the civil power, has a basis in law. We are very naive if we think that post the 1998 agreement there will never be an emergency in this State again.”
“If the Attorney General is advising the Government that there ought to be or that it is preferable that there should be a statutory basis for this, I am in favour of that. I say most emphatically that, subject to my remark to the effect that we need a full-time rather than a part-time Minister for Defence, what is proposed is not merely sensible but also necessary in support of democracy.”
“These Houses can convene thereafter and say that something was excessive or that something else should not have happened, but the notion that they should be consulted in advance before any of those kind of situations come into play is, frankly, ridiculous. We have to stand by the rule of law. There are occasions when challenges to the rule of law, as we saw recently, can become so severe that the economic and social damage to the State and its international reputation would be colossal if the Government cannot act effectively. There is ample precedent over the 100 years or so since the foundation of the State for the deployment of the Army and the Defence Forces in aid of the civil power.”
“It was perfectly proper for the Minister who is with us today to seek the assistance of the Army in deploying trucks to remove other trucks, the purpose of which was to choke off the economic life of the country and bring the economy to its knees. If we do not understand that, we have a really big problem. The idea that both Houses of the Oireachtas would have had to be convened before the Army was sent to rescue Don Tidey is ridiculous. The executive power of the State is lodged in the Government; it is not lodged in these Houses. There are occasions when the executive power of the State requires instant and effective action.”
“I know full well that what is in mind is tow trucks to open up access to vital fuel arteries to keep this country going. If a group of citizens thinks they have the right to say to Government and the community at large that they will bring Government to its knees unlawfully and in breach of the criminal law, that nobody will stop them and that, if gardaí and squad cars cannot stop them, that will be the end of the matter and the Government will surrender, it does not matter how many people support them, that is a huge mistake. At the time, I did not want to add fuel to the flames, if I may use that analogy.”
“It is wrong to do it. It is a breach of the criminal law to do it. There is no right to organise a blockade of fuel depots with a view to bringing the Government to its knees. Nobody has the right to do that, no matter how strongly they feel about taxes on petrol or diesel or whatever. I share many of their views about some of our fossil fuel taxation policies but nobody has the right to bring society to its knees. In those circumstances, if it were necessary to shift trucks and obstacles and it the only group with the equipment to do so was the Army, it would be absurd for those resources not to be available in some shape or form to ensure the lifeblood of the country continued to flow. I reject the idea that anybody has ever suggested that the Army get involved in batoning civilians on protest lines or anything of that kind.”
“There was a time when most schoolchildren could tell you the names of the Ministers running different Departments but now you would need to have an expert memory to work out the exact jurisdiction of the various Ministers of the Cabinet. I am not going to speak on something irrelevant but I will strongly make the point that we need a full-time Minister for Defence because what has happened to the Defence Forces over the last 20 years has been nothing short of scandalous. They have been run down to a very low state. We can deal with that later. Let us be clear. Nobody in this community has the right to blockade fuel depots with a view to bringing the country to its knees. It in unlawful and criminal. It is a criminal conspiracy. I will repeat what I have said before in this House; you may not do that. It is not legitimate to do that.”
“It is proposed that the Minister for Defence should, following a request from the Minister for justice, have the right to direct the deployment of member of the Defence Forces in aid of the civil power to do what they have unfortunately done very regularly in the past. It is proposed that deployment would be conditional on a request from one Minister to the other that the Army should be so deployed. This puts what happened in the past on a lawful basis. The reference to the Minister is a reference to the Minister for Defence. We now have two Ministers for finance and two Ministers for education. We have a Minister for children and Ministers for a whole load of other things.”
“If the current Attorney General and Minister for justice believe that a statutory basis is needed for this, it is our duty to assist them in that regard rather than telling them that we must make provision in law that, before anything is done, both Houses of the Oireachtas must be convened and their authority sought to conduct a search for Don Tidey or that Private Patrick Kelly should not be allowed help An Garda Síochána, laying down his life, without a resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas. The recent fuel protests probably gave rise to further consideration of these matters. It is not coincidence that this section is being put in place.”
“I was there to protect gardaí from being murdered by people, whether loyalists or our own republican paramilitaries, who were trying to challenge the authority of the Irish State. This has happened before. The real question is what is the appropriate mechanism. Is there a statutory basis for it? I cannot remember - and I do not remember sitting in that ditch either - whether there was, in fact, a statutory basis for what was done previously. I do not remember whether anybody at the time of the Tidey kidnapping and the murders of Patrick Kelly and Gary Sheehan queried whether it was appropriate for the Army to be involved. I doubt that they did because, at the time, it was generally assumed that the Government of the day could call on An Garda Síochána and the Army to act jointly to confront serious situations where necessary.”
“However, would anyone who does not share that view seriously suggest that if the Government deployed the Defence Forces in such circumstances, it would not be open to any Member of the Oireachtas who thought there was something wrong with what had happened to seek an early meeting of the Houses to determine whether such powers were properly deployed? In the real world, powers of this kind cannot be contingent on debates in Dáil Éireann. In the past, the Defence Forces have acted in aid of the civil power. I did it myself on one occasion. On a number of occasions, I ended up in a ditch on the Concession Road outside Castleblayney with my worthy Gustav submachine gun.”
“Those of us who have been around slightly longer than others will remember with crystal clarity when the movement of cash in this State had to be done in the presence of trucks full of soldiers. We saw what happened when that did not happen in Adare, County Limerick. Members of An Garda Síochána were machine-gunned by people intent on stealing money for the Provisional IRA. We cannot have a situation where Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann have to approve resolutions in all circumstances where events such as those arise. Was it wrong to deploy armed members of the Defences Forces and gardaí in the searches across the country to rescue Don Tidey? If someone is of the view that it was wrong for the Defence Forces to assist An Garda Síochána in that regard, that is fine.”
“You could not say that when Tiede Herrema was the subject of a kidnapping in County Laois, you would want to have a meeting of the Dáil and Seanad to decide whether members of An Garda Síochána should be assisted by members of the Army in confronting that situation. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves that Galen Weston, another executive, was the subject of an elaborate attempt to kidnap him, and the late Ben Dunne was the object of similar activity. What happened in the case of Don Tidey was shocking. A member of the Defence Forces, Private Patrick Kelly, was murdered. Recruit Garda Gary Sheehan, for whom there is a medal every year now in Templemore, was murdered. Let us remember that there are occasions when the Defence Forces must be deployed in order to vindicate the rights of citizens. Those events are by no means unique.”
“A number of things occur to me in this context. The first is that we should not suffer from collective amnesia. It is a long time ago, but not that long ago, that Don Tidey, a supermarket executive, was the subject of a kidnapping. The Provisional IRA, at that stage, looked for £5 million ransom for his return. He was hidden in a number of places but eventually in County Leitrim, in the custody of the Provisional IRA. Extensive searches were authorised by the Government at the time to find and release him and return him to his family. Let us be clear about one thing. In those circumstances, we cannot have meetings of the Dáil and Seanad to work out whether the Army, which was in the end deployed extensively to find and rescue Don Tidey, should or should not be deployed. You cannot do that in an orderly fashion.”
“In the end, this is not merely a threat to the prison officers themselves, but, very frequently, a threat to other prisoners, for whom we all have a collective duty to keep safe.”
“It is the only point I want to make. I do not believe there is anything inherently wrong with using incapacitant sprays in disorderly situations of a certain kind, but they cannot be made routine. I presume that the rules the Minister has in mind for them will have similar requirements as apply to gardaí, who are even required to report on the use of a baton and the like. Senator Ruane said that perhaps the Minister thinks she is being naive in some of the things she said. Many of the points she is making are correct. The answer, though, is not to leave Irish prison officers in a situation where they have to use excessive force, in excess of what would be achieved by an incapacitant spray, to subdue riotous and disorderly behaviour.”
“I am not trying to delay things. I do, however, want to put something on record. We are not going to deal with the issues that have been raised unless we have decent, civilised circumstances. We are not going to deal with it. The Minister was asked by Senator O’Reilly to talk about Thornton Hall. He did talk about what he has done in two other locations, and that is good news. It concerned what the Minister has done in Castlerea and what he is planning to do in Clover Hill. What is needed now is for the Minister’s colleagues in government to make an absolutely firm commitment to start building the facility at Thornton Hall, including the various units to which I refer, and to make use of the significant investment that has already gone into that place to end overcrowding. That is the point I want to make.”
“It was to have sufficient space available on a prison campus for different kinds of units, with different regimes in them, with facilities for sport and outdoor activities, and the capacity to have people properly housed in decent circumstances as opposed to overcrowded conditions. I am strongly of the view that successive governors of Mountjoy Prison, especially since my time as Minister, have made huge efforts to-----”
“How can somebody who has existed for months or years in such circumstances really be expected to emerge out of prison as an improved citizen determined to spend the rest of his or her life obedient to the law? The reality is that massive overcrowding gives rise to major problems in terms of interpersonal relations between prisoners and between prison officers and prisoners. That carries with it the whole question of keeping prisoners safe, which we, as a society, have an obligation to do. This brings me to the point that we were about to build Thornton Hall in 2007. The purpose of that campus was not simply to have a super-prison near Dublin.”
“With an increasing population, particularly where demographic increases are taking place, namely in the age groups where criminality is more located and more likely to occur, from a statistical point of view, the simple fact is that at the very least we need the number of prison spaces that exist at present. In addition, those prison spaces need to be allocated on a humane basis. We are putting two or three people in a cell - two on bunks and one on a rubber mattress on the floor. The Chief Inspector of Prisons has commented on this situation, as has the UN committee. How can anybody think that situation can possibly be reconciled with an overall political mandate to engage in rehabilitation of prisoners?”
“That is in the context where we had one quarter remission for good behaviour back in the days when I was the Minister for justice. It is now one third remission. It is not as if the system has not attempted to cope with the situation that now exists. In the context of how we deal with this problem, it is true that it is not solely related to the growth in population, but it is equally naive to believe that social attitudes to the criminal justice system exist in total isolation from the question of sentencing policy. My view is that those who demand severe penalties, even in a context where there is one third rather than one quarter remission, are, in fact, demanding the need for extra prison spaces when those penalties are being imposed.”
“We are just talking about incapacitant sprays. I share the view that we do not want to normalise their use. I remember when I was where the Minister is, being worried by the use of cells for the detention of prisoners who get overly het up. They were put into rubber-lined cells in total darkness as a fairly frequent event in terms of prison discipline, which I considered unacceptable. We dealt with that issue by ending the previous practice and bringing in a far more humane system of isolation cells for people who are a danger to themselves or to others. I am glad that change was made. Nonetheless, I take the view that we are in a situation where our prison system is in crisis. It is not in the Minister's interest to unduly dwell on this fact but it is in crisis because over-occupancy has risen to very serious proportions.”
“I listened carefully to what Senators O'Reilly and Ruane have said. I share their view that prison should be a punishment of last resort rather than in any circumstance a punishment that is handed down, particularly in the District Court, with a view to seeming to take a severe stance in the hope that the Circuit Court will some time later take a more moderate view of the offence. Quite often in these Houses we hear earnest demands for mandatory prison sentences for assaulting emergency workers, gardaí and so on. At the same time the catastrophic consequences of sending a young person, nearly always a young man, to prison for an assault in those circumstances, is not taken into account by those who demand such measures be brought into law. The second thing is that we are not dealing here with Tasers being used in prisons.”
“That is a good idea, but how do the Americans, for instance, deal with that? It is a question. I wonder are they on-side, so to speak, with somebody simply saying that they have never been convicted of a serious offence. Have we the understanding that you could not be dumped out of America for lying even though the Irish law seems to say you can tell the Americans you have no conviction? It is a point I would like to have explored. I welcome the Minister, I commend him on his activity and industry, and look forward to this Bill being properly considered.”
“I welcome the legislation and I look forward to adequate time being given on Committee Stage to each of the pieces because a lot of people would say there is nothing controversial in this Bill but there are things which need to be carefully looked at to see whether they will have the effect that the draftsman and the Minister intend and that the House would intend in approving them. From that point of view, there is no rush with this. I am not suggesting that we should delay it in any way but I would like the opportunity, for instance, to look at some of the provisions relating to disregarding convictions to see whether they will work. I notice, for instance, that somebody who gets a disregard procedure in their favour is not required, as a matter of any requirement of any foreign government, to disclose that conviction, which is fine.”