Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for attending. Their insights are incredibly useful to us in the context of the project on which we are working. In fairness to the ICMSA and the IFA, they could not spell it out any stronger in terms of the fear people are feeling. There is no question about it and nobody doubts that the fear is totally real. The question with which we must grapple is how to deal with it. In some ways, what seems to be coming out of this discussion is that this is as much an indictment of how we treat older citizens and about the erosion of community in towns and, more especially, rural areas. It is all about community policing and we probably need to join the dots on that.

The WIT study is really interesting. It is very important to have facts to inform whatever actions we take. In terms of the responses to the survey, for 66% of people the issue was burglary and that type of crime. There was quite a big drop when it came to issues like assault and obviously, we do not want that gap to narrow. In terms of the survey, to what degree was it the case that people who had been impacted upon by crime were more inclined to respond? Is that why the percentages are so high? The fact that the percentages were so high may have been because those who had been victims of crime were more enthused and more likely to complete the survey. In that context, I would like a bit more detail on the study.