Mr. Adrian Cummins:

We do not, or at least I do not, and it is hard to get that information unless the Deputy talks directly to the social services in this regard. A point I wished to make was that where we have seen an increase in Garda deployment for a limited time, whereby the Garda may put in place a number of additional gardaí on a street over a short space of time, one will see those involved in aggressive begging moving to another area. Consequently, one is moving them on to another area. When the Garda conducts an operation in a certain part of the city, one will see movement of aggressive begging to another part of the city. However, the gist of our call is that greater visibility of gardaí on the streets will lead to a decrease in such activity. Moreover, if that is coupled with giving the Garda additional powers to tackle aggressive begging, then the problem will be sorted out.

In response to Deputy Mac Lochlainn's point about businesses getting involved, we would be delighted to so do but there must be actions on this issue within a fairly brief timescale as we cannot be here in three years' time talking about the same issue.