Dáil hears call for agency to take on ‘thugs’ along Border

A cross-border statutory agency is necessary to “take on the thugs and criminals” in the border community and to “root out this evil once and for all”, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has told the Dáil.

He said that the existing taskforce to deal with cross-border crime “won’t cut it” any longer.

There is “huge fear and an omertà across the region” because of paramilitary organisations who did not cease activities after the Belfast Agreement, he said.

Mr Martin described the attack on senior Quinn group executive Kevin Lunney by a masked gang as "the last straw in terms of giving protection and quality of life to the people of this region".

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He compared the "savagery and inhumanity" of the attack on on Mr Lunney to the murder by the IRA in 2007 of Paul Quinn, the young man who was lured to a barn and beaten to death by a gang who "broke every bone in his body".

Mr Quinn’s parents are still seeking justice, he said. He said two gardaí - Tony Golden and Adrian Donohoe - had also been killed in the Border region.

There is a “terrible legacy” in the area and “we’ve got to face up to it”, Mr Martin said.

He called on the Government to join up with the British government to set up a statutory cross-border agency involving policing authorities, the Revenue, environmental agencies and the Criminal Assets Bureau, in line with legislation Fianna Fáil had previously introduced.

It is time “to once and for all take on these thugs and these criminals and show them that there’s only one authority and that is the authority of democratic law and order”, he said.

Minister for Business Heather Humphreys reiterated her condemnation of the attack on Mr Lunney, who she said she had known for a long time, and others on his colleagues.

They were part of an enterprise that supported 800 jobs in the Ballyconnell area, part of her Cavan-Monaghan constituency, she said.

She too recalled the attack on Mr Quinn, saying she had passed the place he had been killed and “it would put the hairs standing on the back of your neck” to think what had happened to him.

The Minister said the Government would consider Mr Martin’s proposal but she stressed that the existing taskforce is effective and working well.