Mr. Richard Guiney:

I agree fully with the Deputy and it is that kind of aggressive begging, as described by the Deputy on Grafton Street, that we are here to discuss. As for working with other groups, in 2012 we were part of a group looking at perceptions of Dublin that consisted of ourselves, the Garda, Dublin City Council and homeless and drug charities. It is important to note that much of the time, one is talking about perceptions. Dublin is a very safe city, its crime rates are good relative to other cities but yet there is this fear factor. To put it in context, in the Your Dublin, Your Voice survey of 2012 to which I referred, 74% of people indicated they felt safe in Dublin by day, while 35% stated they felt safe in Dublin by night. I attended a meeting with colleagues in Liverpool who told me their statistics showed that 99% of people there felt safe by day and 70% by night, and this is the kind of range into which we must get.

I believe all the business groups would be happy to work with people in homeless charities and with those who are providing drug services because there should be a holistic approach to this issue. Mr. Martin Harte has mentioned ASBOs and, in general, that is how this issue is dealt with in the United Kingdom, particularly the aggressive type of begging about which the Deputy spoke. Some interesting research was conducted by a lady called Dr. Susan Fitzgerald, who is with the University of York, on people who had been served with ASBOs. She found that in the majority of cases in which people were in genuine need such as, for example, people who had been engaging in certain anti-social behaviour on foot of addiction difficulties or whatever, they were very well served when, on being served with an ASBO, they were put in touch with social services. Such people got a caseworker who would meet them and note how they found themselves in such difficult circumstances. The caseworker would outline the services available to them and could help to organise them, fix the appointments and so on. Dr. Fitzgerald found that in a significant majority of cases, this was highly beneficial for the individual concerned. In addition, as an ASBO is not a criminal sanction, one is not giving people a criminal sanction when in fact they have social issues with which they must deal. There certainly is great scope for considering all those issues together.