TIME TO RESTORE LAW & ORDER TO OUR STREETS
Posted on 29th July 2023
Fine Gael could get a fright in the next General Election because they are in the process of casting to the winds one of their most important sources of support and that is the assumption that they are the Law & Order party. Starkly put, this means keeping the citizens of this republic safe. Long gone are the days when Paddy Cooney was a Fine Gael Minister for Justice. In politics perception is important and at the moment it seems that our current Minister Helen McEntee is entangled by a Woke Agenda. She should perhaps take note of the current objections to our Hate Crime legislation expressed by former Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, a man with a formidable intellect. As it is, this legislation may face significant opposition in the Senate. Helen McEntee, my local TD, has been greatly advantaged by the fact that she is closely allied with the Taoiseach. In fact, it would be fair to say that the Taoiseach is an enthusiastic supporter of this legislation. However, at what cost? The general public is right to ask whether the push behind this legislation is proving to be a distraction for the Minister and, therefore, from the government’s main responsibility, which is keeping citizens safe when they walk the streets in our capital city. The Minister insists Dublin is safe, saying she is: “Out and about without members of the Garda Siochana and I do that on a regular basis.” Well, I have been frequenting the centre of the capital city for decades and I have to say that in recent times you can feel rather uneasy walking the streets at any time, not only at night. The Minister must stop deluding herself that the streets are safe when that clearly is not the case. There are simply not enough gardai coming out of Templemore and certainly not sufficient numbers attached to Store Street Garda Station. Leo Varadkar’s political antennae should be picking up the danger signals here. It doesn’t play well with the electorate when they start to think they are being fed photo ops when action is required. If the government are having difficulty in recruiting gardai they should review pay and conditions to make sure that joining the force is an attractive proposition. The recent slide in numbers is disconcerting.
However, back to the Hate Crime legislation. Apart from concerns on the freedom of speech front, I was struck by the comments made by Detective Garda Ferris in the Irish Daily Mail when he said, it would create: “An opaque legal climate where offences will be a matter of subjective interpretation, each one requiring a laborious and time-consuming investigation.” Imagine heaping all that on an overstretched under-resourced force. It doesn’t get my vote.
