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Ahern: Collins murder a watershed in war on crime
JUSTICE Minister Dermot Ahern has said the Criminal Justice Bill overwhelmingly passed in the Dail on Friday is a response to the attack on the people, the State and the justice system represented by the murder of innocent Limerick businessman Roy Collins.
Leading lawyers, civil liberties groups, Labour and Sinn Fein all opposed the bill being "rushed through" the Oireachtas without considered debate but Roy Collins' father Steve said the legislation could not be introduced soon enough for his family, members of whom who have been threatened since Roy was shot dead in the city in April on the orders of a criminal gang.
Speaking of the brutal murder in the Dail this Friday, Minister Ahern said:
"In that case, some people waited four years to take revenge on a family and murder somebody related to somebody who gave evidence in a trial four years earlier."
"I am not trying to raise the Roy Collins murder above any other murder. Of course, every murder has been awful for the families of the murdered, but the Roy Collins murder was different. Clearly, the murderers were sending out a signal to anyone in that community that if they assisted in any shape or form in cases against them, they would take revenge and make an example.
"Clearly, that was a different murder to any murder that has taken place in the State. It was an attack on the people, the State and on the criminal justice system. If the Oireachtas did not respond to that attack, we were completely ignoring the level of threat and intimidation communities must suffer in their daily lives."
Defence Minister Willie O'Dea has said jury intimidation was "widespread" in Limerick and his colleagues Peter Power and Niall Collins said they too were frequently approached by constituents looking to evade jury duty for fear of reprisals from criminal gangs. Labour's Deputy Jan O'Sullivan told the Limerick Leader this week that no constituent had ever sought this type of advice from her.
But Minister Ahern said Fine Gael's Deputy Kieran O'Donnell was on the Dail record as saying jurors in Limerick had been intimidated.
Labour and Sinn Fein opposed the bill, which was comfortably passed by 118 votes to 23 with the support of Fine Gael.
Deputy O'Donnell said he welcomed the legislation but called on the Government to "back it up" with more resources for gardai fighting crime in Limerick.
"Taken in tandem with the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act recently passed, this now gives us a more potentially effective framework in combating gangland crime in Limerick and in preventing the loss of more innocent victims like Roy Collins, Shane Geoghegan and Brian Fitzgerald," said Deputy O'Donnell.
"The people of Limerick are demanding and deserve that these kinds of strong measures be put in place by Government to combat gangland crime. I have emphasised this throughout my involvement in the Dail debate on the legislation. It is critical that having come this far, the Government does not let the side down now by skimping on Garda resources."
The bill is expected to be carried in the Seanad next week but Labour has warned President McAleese may test its constitutionality. Limerick lawyers like Elizabeth Walsh, president of the Limerick Bar Association; Brian McInerney SC, and Ted McCarthy have all cautioned the bill is vulnerable to challenge in the Supreme Court or in Europe.
But Minister Ahern has told the Dail that those concerns are unfounded.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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