Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a little money, some €1.6 million, for the north east inner city, NEIC, but we identified 50 urban communities with high levels of disadvantage, antisocial behaviour and people from these areas being imprisoned and so on. I applaud the work the Minister is doing in NEIC but these issues are replicated in towns and cities all over the country. This is a phenomenon that happens in towns and cities. As the Minister knows, there is a programme which I think was initiated in Pat Rabbitte's time, called the RAPID programme. It focused exclusively on these areas and could save a fortune in the justice system by reducing all the problems we have in these communities. These problems affected people in the communities the most. We have to recognise that. Some 95% of people in these disadvantaged communities are trying to get on with their lives but because of the disadvantage of the community as a whole, they face a disproportionate number of social issues.

One of the concepts of community development was that it would be focused particularly on vulnerable communities. This is what RAPID was about. I do not care if it is called anything else. I am not fussed about the name. We seem to have lost our focus on the scientifically identified communities with the highest level of challenge regarding education, crime, antisocial behaviour, drug abuse, housing and homelessness etc. Give me a community garda any day to try to solve it rather than a garda with an Uzi submachine gun. I not believe in heavy policing. These are societal and community problems that are spreading to other things. An awful lot of the people in these communities who wind up in prison are in prison for a year or less. Unfortunately, some of the young people go into prison and come out worse than they went in. Will the Minister and Minister of State give deep consideration to looking at what they are doing in the north-east inner city and state this is not confined to north-inner city Dublin? There are other places south of the river and throughout the city. We could all name them. As I have said, we identified approximately 50 of them. Will the Government think of going back and putting a big focus not so much on a police response to these issues but on a community response to reducing the challenges in these communities?