It was frustrating that members of the illegal organisation believed to have been responsible for the Omagh atrocity were still free to assemble and to carry out their so-called political objectives with impunity and that they were free to signal to the rest of the community that they had no intention of abandoning their murderous methods, Mr Maurice Manning (FG) said.
He was commenting on statistics given to the House about the operation of the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act, which was put on the statute books following the mass murder in Omagh almost two years ago.
The House agreed that the special powers, including those of extended detention, should be continued for another year.
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said it was the view of the Garda authorities, as outlined in a report he had laid before the House, and in the light of their current security threat assessment, that the provisions should remain in force. He fully concurred with that view.
Twenty-four-hour detention extensions authorised by district judges had been used on 29 occasions. None of those in respect of whom such orders had been made had yet been charged or convicted, but a number of files had been submitted to the Law Officers for directions.
The sparing use of the provisions of the Act did not in any way indicate that they were no longer needed, but rather reflected the intention that exceptional measures should not be used routinely, added the Minister.
Mr Manning said it was clear that the provisions had been used sparingly. The report that had been laid before the House was limited in what it could say. It would have been much more satisfactory if the gardai could report to the Oireachtas - through a parliamentary committee, for example - on any changes they would like to see made to the legislation or why progress under it had been less than many people might have expected.
There had been a justified level of outrage after the Omagh bombing, but it was one of the sad features of human life that as time passed that sense of outrage tended to diminish. "We should be as angry today as we were in the aftermath of the Omagh bombing and as determined to ensure that something like that should never happen again. We should also be as determined today as we were then that the perpetrators of that outrage be brought to justice and made to pay for one of the worst crimes in this island."
Very many people, especially those who had lost loved ones, must feel a terrible sense of frustration when they saw the brazen arrogance of a grouping which had not issued a word of regret or even an acknowledgement that they might be mistaken in what they were doing. "Maybe it's a reflection on us as a community that such people are not visited with the moral obloquy which their deeds demand, that the system of shunning and boycotting people like that is not part of our tradition, that the community does not show these people in sufficiently stark terms what it thinks of them and of their behaviour."
Mr Joe Costello (Lab) said the workings of the legislation did not seem to have been very effective and this made him wonder why the gardai favoured its continuation. He found it difficult to understand how not one person had been charged with membership of the "Real IRA", which everyone knew was responsible for the Omagh carnage.