Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House for facilitating this debate. One of the nicest things to hear is Deputies who are not directly from Dublin saying that they feel it is their city too. That is very important.

I am incredibly proud of Dublin. It has been the honour of my life to represent the constituency of Dublin Central and, in particular, the north inner city, which is such a unique part of our country. The people who grew up in the communities in my area, those who choose to make their homes there and those who come there for recreational purposes or to shop or work, make the area incredibly vibrant and diverse. It is a fantastic place in which to live. One could take a walk around the north inner city right now and see all the bustling activity taking place there. I walk to work, which means that I walk through O'Connell Street every day, usually twice, and I walk there at night. I know that I might be a bit of a tough, but I never feel afraid or scared to walk in the north inner city.

We have to recognise that there are issues in the area. Many people were surprised by the recent RTÉ "Prime Time" programme on O’Connell Street, but it came as no shock to people like me who live in the area that there are major problems there which need to be addressed and about which we need to be honest. It is very easy to point the finger and say that the problems are all the fault of Dublin City Council or of An Garda Síochána and that there are simple solutions such as better management or changing the management or changing our way of policing. Like so many simple solutions, they will probably not result in serious change.

I would very much like to see Dublin City Council do a better job of ensuring that homeless services are not concentrated in one area of the city, as seems to be the case right now . We cannot expect Dublin City Council to pick up the slack left by other councils that are not doing their fair share. As has been pointed out by previous speakers, we cannot expect this to happen with the weak local government model we have at the moment. All of this is happening while parties in this Chamber vote through the council every year to reduce the funding available. I look forward very much to the day when we have a directly elected mayor who can raise their own funds and levy taxes in their own way.

I would like to see a better policing response to crime and antisocial behaviour in our city. There is no suggestion or evidence to support the idea that we can police our way out of this problem or that criminalising those caught in addiction will prevent addiction. It has not worked like that in any other open democracy and it is not going to work here. Many of the problems we have in Dublin City are rooted in addiction, poverty, deprivation and trauma. Unless we in this House take radical steps to tackle that core fact, what we are doing is not going to have a material impact on Dublin's streets. Because we a have a centralised model of government, it will primarily be decisions made in this House, not in Civic Offices on Wood Quay or in Garda headquarters in the Phoenix Park, that will make the difference.

We have a significant opportunity with the upcoming citizens’ assembly on drug use to radically reform our drug policy. The assembly should not be hamstrung by our current thinking or even by what is viewed as best practice in other countries. We need to talk to those affected, namely, families and communities, look at harm-reduction strategies and drug legalisation and reduce the time and effort being spent on a largely unwinnable war on drugs.

We need to look at the support we are providing to the communities most impacted by drug addiction; not just support for those in addiction but also support for people long before they fall into addiction. I refer here to supports such as those relating to mental health, sport and education. Right now, I am trying to help a local community crèche in the north inner city find a suitable space. For single-parent families and women who desperately need it, accessing children should not be the struggle that it is. I can tell the House that it is very difficult to find a space.

We need to look at our model of local government and our funding for it. People in need of support will probably end up finding it in Dublin and other urban council areas. This needs to be recognised in the funding model nationwide. Services should not be concentrated in that way because it serves nobody. Everybody has a right to access services in their local area in a way that is meaningful for them.

It is most important that we deal with those caught in addiction in a compassionate manner. I was disappointed by the dehumanising language used recently in respect of this matter and in the discussion relating to O'Connell Street. In one form or another, be it drugs, alcohol, gambling, addiction has probably had an impact on every family in Ireland.

We are all aware of the challenging behaviours that accompany all forms of addiction. We are also aware that nobody will make his or her way out of addiction by being ostracised or vilified. We need to give such people support. They need it. Our families, our friends and our communities need our support. They need, for example, supervised injection facilities, a measure passed by this House a full five years ago, but with little progress since. They need their addiction to be treated as a health matter, not a criminal matter. They need politicians to be brave in our reform of drug policy, and that all starts in this House.

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