Mr. Thomas McCarthy:

I will pick up on the issue of perception. Senator Ruane asked me a question earlier that I do not think I answered. It has been talked about a little more during the meeting. People are drinking in the city centre every weekend. I am sure there are hundreds of arrests; I do not know the numbers. There are loads of broken cars and windows and people who get beaten up and end up in hospitals and so on. It happens every weekend and is never reported but if one incident happens in an area like ours, it is all over the newspapers. There is a perception of antisocial behaviour in certain areas that get scapegoated for it.

I will mention that 99% of the time, if somebody walked by a group of young people where I work, absolutely nothing will happen. Young people on the corner are not involved in any antisocial behaviour 99% of the time. If they were playing sports and people walked by, those people would not be scared. The point I am making is that young people are hanging around on corners because they have nowhere else to go. They are either in their gaff on a PlayStation or on the corner with their mates. They do not have anywhere else to go. In Dublin city, more and more space is being taken for housing, businesses and hotels. Every time a little space is taken away, it means less space for young people to have a place to go and the more they will hang around on corners in areas where they become a nuisance to other members of the public. I would like to talk more about this when I have a little more time, if someone else wants to ask me about it.

One of the things we need to think about when we build cities - I am just talking about Dublin because I work there but it could apply throughout the country - is the need to recognise that we build them for people and not for builders, not for people to profit from and not for hoteliers. We are building cities for the people who live in them. In cities and urban areas in particular, and I am only speaking about urban areas because I work in them, there is no space, infrastructure or resources for these young people who are getting condemned and scapegoated across the media and throughout our country. That needs to be talked about a little more. That is all I wanted to say about that.