Ms Angela Willis:

As the Commissioner has said, we are doing a lot of work in the city centre with partner agencies in recognition that a collaborative approach is required in the city centre in particular to create the feeling of safety for people who visit, work in and live in our city centre.

I will give an overview of some of the activity that we have undertaken in the city centre and across the Dublin metropolitan region. We have initiated more than 92,000 prosecutions since January of this year up to 31 October. We have undertaken 67,948 proactive patrols in that timeframe. We have seized illicit drugs with an estimated street value of €58,847. A number of very high-profile incidents occurred over the summer, in particular assaults, and a number of people are before the courts in regard to them. We have a number of files with the DPP in regard to further charges that may be preferred in connection with some of the incidents. I will not go into the detail of any of the incidents other than to say that we have had significant success in the investigation of those and in the identification of perpetrators. Going back to the feeling of safety, our statistics do not show any significant increase. We are in a very similar place to where we were in 2019. In fact, the only category of assault that has increased in that time is assault on our own members. We know that a collaborative approach is required in the city centre.

We know we need to deal with the root cause of the issues that create the perception of people not feeling safe in the city centre. We have a lot of vulnerability in the city centre and we work with our partner agencies. We work very closely with the Ana Liffey Drug Project. When we come across people who have vulnerability, addiction issues and other issues that need a wider response than law enforcement, we have a referral mechanism that works very well. We have had very good success with it. Other agencies, such as the HSE and Ana Liffey, then kick in. We work very closely with Dublin City Council on this also to address the root cause of the issues that make people feel unsafe.

At a previous meeting there was some conversation about begging in the city centre. A report was issued a number of years ago. The Ana Liffey Drug Project did a lot of research on how we can address these issues. We need to address the underlying cause of all of these issues. Sometimes it manifests as a feeling of being unsafe. People may be hanging around the city centre waiting to access treatment. They may not be engaged in crime. The vast majority of time they are not engaged in crime but it still creates a perception of fear in the city. We are working very hard to try to address it.

We do a significant number of proactive patrols. We were provided with additional funding by the Minister for Justice during the summer. We have particular operations in place with the support of this additional funding. We are trying to target resources through the analysis of crime trends and finding out what time of the day and day of the week things happen and where they happen. We then target our resources in a proactive and informed manner to address these issues, in partnership with the other agencies with which we have very close and positive working relationships in the city centre in particular. We also work with local community safety partnerships, such as the north-east inner city initiative. Very positive proactive work is being done whereby families are supported in trying to break the cycle of crime, which can be prevalent in some situations. We will continue to work with our partner agencies and to engage in proactive patrols and policing, in addition to reacting where required.