Seanad report:A new category of judge should be created as part of a pro-active campaign to smash crime gangs, Eoghan Harris (Ind) urged.
The link that had existed between paramilitarism and crime actually offered a solution to the current problem, he contended. The Taoiseach had begun the debate by referring to the possible use of the Special Criminal Court.
While saying that he hoped the issue would not be politicised, Mr Harris expressed the view that too often left-wingers were ready to talk about the danger to civil liberties rather than joining with the general community in solving the crime problem first.
It was time for politicians on all sides to work together in the effort to deal with crime in four specific areas. There was a Dublin crime problem, there was a Limerick crime problem, there was a Border crime problem, and there was an impending problem with foreign gangs trafficking people and committing crime in this country.
Mr Harris said there was a need to integrate Offences Against the State Act provisions, which we had from the "war on terrorism", with a new category of investigating or prosecuting judges.
Instead of a garda telling the Special Criminal Court that he or she believed what was being said by witnesses who did not want to go into the Witness Protection Programme, an investigating judge would be saying that the witnesses were bona fide and that an application was being made to have suspects interned or locked up for 30 days.
Instead of reacting under the British common law system and waiting for a crime to be committed and then doing something about it, the State should adopt the strategy he was advocating and create four or five investigating judges who would have special powers of subpoena to combat crime gangs.
Joining in the condemnation of killings on the Border and in Dublin, David Norris (Ind) said the chilling words used during the fatal Monaghan assault, "now you know who is in charge here", brought to mind the subject matter of the RTÉ programme The Killings at Coolacrease.
Mr Harris had participated and had been splendidly forthright, "but I was very, very ashamed by some of the things that were said. There was a horrible and nasty, small-minded, bestial attempt, retrospectively, to smear the Pearson family, and I deplore it."
John Ellis (FF) demanded that the report of the Constituency Commission be rejected by the Government. Mr Ellis said that as a result of the report the people of Co Leitrim would not be in a position to elect for themselves a TD of any political persuasion.
The Minister for the Environment should explain why the commission had not taken cognisance of the submissions made to it from across the spectrum.