Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny strongly attacked the Government's record on fighting crime.
He accused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of presiding over "a war which has exploded on your watch". Referring to the shooting in the leg of a five-year-old boy in Limerick, he said: "Jordan Crawford was not known to the gardaí. He was not associated with the underworld. No, because he was five years of age."
He was lucky, said Mr Kenny, to be recovering in the Limerick Regional Hospital. "And this is all, apparently, because he took a bullet that was intended for his uncle. It is all, actually, because the Government has failed spectacularly to deal with serious crime, and especially gang crime. New recruits, the new gun men are not men at all, they are children.
"The psychopathic gangs, Taoiseach, are recruiting children. No fear, no respect, no personal boundaries, no moral code. And no wonder. How many big crime bosses were jailed in the last five years? How many? None. Not a single one." Mr Kenny said Minister for Justice Michael McDowell had the "gall" to come into the House and dismiss them as the "last sting of a dying wasp". He added: "Some sting, some wasp."
Mr Ahern said there was a very good community spirit in Moyross, Co Limerick. "What the people are asking the State to do, across a range of areas, from gardaí, special detective unit, special task force, is to deal with a very small but hardened and dangerous group of criminals who operate in that community." Mr Ahern said there was "a dangerous group" in Limerick. The Government, he added, had asked the former Dublin city manager, John Fitzgerald, a Limerick man, to co-ordinate activities, across a range of services, to deal with the issue.
Mr Ahern said it was a difficult area. "They pointed out to me the surrounding countryside, where there is about 100 acres of land, where there is only one industry employing about 40 or 50 people." He had not seen any other section of the country which was as well protected by gardaí. He said he did not know what Mr Kenny was talking about in referring to hardened criminals. "In my own constituency, there have been numerous hardened criminals who have got long sentences."
Mr Kenny said that the first duty of a sovereign government was to protect its citizens. "If a government is unable to do that, it has failed in its duty." Amid heated exchanges, Mr Kenny said it was a disgrace for Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea to say that the Government could not prevent crime. "What are you doing?"
Earlier, Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said that the headline crime statistics had been positive. "The provisional headline crime statistics for the third-quarter, the most recent, show a decrease of 1.6 per cent for the quarter compared with the same quarter in 2005."
Fine Gael spokesman Jim O'Keeffe said that serious crime generally, had increased by more than 40 per cent since 2000.
Mr McDowell said that the number of crimes per thousand of the population had reduced since 1995. "With an increasingly urbanised population, the amount of criminality per 1,000 people in our country has gone down significantly."
