Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I want to use the opportunity of speaking on this Bill to invite the Minister to revisit issues on urban crime and disorder, especially in the greater Dublin area and in my constituency of Dublin West. I have debated these issues with the Minister on a number of occasions. I know he has been learning and he may now know a bit more about anti-social behaviour in the community. Communities around the country, particularly in urban areas, are enduring a misery that is beyond belief. We often speak about the Celtic tiger and the welcome progress made economically since around 1993-94. However, for many people, the cancer of anti-social behaviour has destroyed the greater economic resources. The lack of community policing and a Garda patrolling service on the streets of cities, towns and villages is destroying the capacity of people to live wholesome lives.

This week, we had the culmination of a series of killings in Dublin, one of those in Dublin 15. There is a real sense of impunity among criminal gangs under this Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. One of the criminal perpetrators in the Ongar area could stand undisguised in a neighbourhood for a number hours stalking and waiting for the victim whom he then shot to death. The Minister held an earlier predecessor of his, the former Deputy Owen, personally responsible every time a post office was robbed. Killers are now walking the streets with guns, stalking their victims in broad daylight in an area in which thousands of young people have committed their life savings to purchase new homes. These are scenes we might have seen in "Gangs of New York". This is the type of policing and deterrence that the current Government has given us, in spite of the fact that it once promised zero tolerance. It is hardly bearable.

A report was published yesterday on the Tallaght area that was part of a larger study, the first part of which was published six months ago. I attended the presentation and I am not sure if anyone from the Progressive Democrats Party was present. There may have been members of the Garda present. The study listed the fears of young children, who are supposed to be growing up cherished by this society. They feared people with drugs and guns hanging around playgrounds and approaches from drug pushers in schoolyards. It also referred to the fears of these children as they listened to joy-riders at night on the streets of west Dublin. Some of these children have probably never spoken to a garda or met a garda in the school classroom. I agree completely with Deputy Connaughton. The presence of gardaí in the community is not a waste of time, as children can get to know the gardaí and begin to feel safe in their own community, as ought to be the case.

The experience of anti-social behaviour in our communities can be far worse than the experience of sectarianism, sexism or racism. Much anti-social behaviour also spirals into those areas. There is a crisis in Ireland with anti-social behaviour and the rule of impunity that currently seems to exist. Gun crime relates to anti-social behaviour because the criminal gangs that have easy access to guns are also the godfathers that have a disproportionate influence in working class housing estates. These godfathers can push drugs in housing estates partly because they have guns and because they are making so much money out of crime. They can walk with a swagger in areas ordinary people cannot as there is no visible community policing presence in the area.

I raised this issue with the Minister in November 2003. Has the Minister had an opportunity to revisit this issue? I spoke about the murder of a young man in a pub in Corduff. I spoke about a nurse who was car-jacked outside her own home in west Dublin. I also spoke of a new estate of affordable, social and private housing called Castlecurragh, where gangs of young kids terrorising people was making life very difficult for the residents. I then asked, in terms similar to those outlined by Deputy Connaughton, for serious community policing to become a critical aspect of our strategic approach to crime and harm reduction. In the course of that Adjournment debate, the Minister stated:

Now we have it. The Deputy is talking about gardaí on the beat. However, we are dealing with armed and homicidal gangs. The answer is not to put more gardaí wandering around estates in the Deputy's constituency. It is deluding the people. The Garda is doing a good job. It is doing its level best to combat all incidences of crime.

That debate took place on 4 November 2003. Because of the campaign I have waged in Dublin West, I am glad to state that when the Minister responded to me about two months ago he had assigned 20 new recruits from Templemore to the Dublin West area because of the problems encountered there. I commend gardaí in Dublin West, including the newly qualified recruits from Templemore, some of whom are probably terrified walking around some local authority estates in pairs. However, where they are visible, the community response is to feel more secure, even if only momentarily. Will the Minister give a commitment that such patrols will remain for at least three years, as recommended in the Patten report as it related to Northern Ireland? That is what is essential.

What is the point of having money in Celtic tiger Ireland if a young person buys a new car which is destroyed by thugs? What is the point of a young person starting a home and family if he or she has no peace of mind? What is the point of an elderly person living in an area if he or she is afraid to answer the door at night because thugs invade the front garden to sit, drink and perform various unspeakable actions? When someone telephones the Garda Síochána, there is no response. Neither can he or she obtain information on the response times for this type of criminality which is destroying the quality of people's lives.

Since that Adjournment debate, the Minister has had 18 months in which to come to terms with the fears stalking our society. The problems stemming from anti-social behaviour are particularly acute for those who live alone, lone female parents and their teenage daughters, the elderly, non-nationals and anyone considered by thugs to be different. The latter category could include ambitious children who are successful at school and go home with bags full of books because they are academic and studious. What we might celebrate as something wonderful for the child's education could lead to him or her being marked out for harassment and bullying by thugs in an estate. In addition, the family home might be set upon by such thugs.

The community garda is the Cinderella of the Garda Síochána. Such gardaí can easily be isolated, are viewed with a certain condescension by other colleagues, and seen as a ready source of surplus manpower to be deployed elsewhere when needed. For a long time people in Dublin West have been familiar with this phenomenon. If anything happens on the Border, our community gardaí vanish to attend such events.

Experience in other countries has more than amply demonstrated the importance of keeping a community or neighbourhood policing service separate from the routine of ordinary policing. While an arrest may well be a sign of success in the mainstream Garda service, in community policing it may be seen as an admission of failure because the role of community gardaí is to deter offenders and thus prevent offences from being committed in the first place. Therefore, a low arrest rate by community gardaí may not be reckoned to be a sign of success within Garda management systems as organised by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

The community policing service is the key to crime prevention and potentially a powerful tool in containing anti-social behaviour. What is needed is more effective training, longer assignments to the task — as set out in the Patten report — and a greater recognition of the importance of community policing. In addition, there should be greater recognition, for promotion purposes, of those community gardaí involved at the coalface. All these elements are essential if the community policing service is to get the recognition it deserves. Evidence in other jurisdictions shows that putting gardaí back into the community is the only serious way of tackling the epidemic of anti-social behaviour and related crime.

A handbook is required on community policing. The law relating to anti-social behaviour and the remedies available to its victims are complex and varied. There is an urgent need to bring together the legal processes open to the police and the public in the form of a handbook which could serve both as a guide for the Garda Síochána and an information base for citizens.

A reduction in response times and greater use of foot patrols would amount to an evident management strategy which would encourage people, many of whom consider reporting minor offences to be a waste of time, to relate more effectively to gardaí. It would also enable gardaí to improve their often inadequate knowledge of, and intelligence on, areas for which they are responsible.

Young people are commonly robbed of their mobile phones by little thuggish yobbos wearing hoodies. It is a traumatic experience for young people and terrifying for their parents because if such thugs were confronted, who knows what serious physical injury might be inflicted on their teenage victims? During the Minister's time in office we have seen murder cases in which teenagers were killed for their mobile phones. That is how bad the situation has become. The Minister must accept some responsibility for what has been happening.

During the past year I sent a young member of my own family to the Garda Síochána but they did not get a response. The Minister's predecessor talked about zero tolerance but I am talking about zero response. How can teenagers build a relationship with the Garda Síochána if when they report a mugging or robbery, they receive no response? This is dysfunctional management of policing by the Minister.

Garda performance criteria are skewed to encourage a focus on medium gravity crimes, including burglary and car theft — offences which yield primary and secondary clear-ups. The Garda practice of "cuffing and stuffing", the non-recording of certain calls for service and the over-recording of certain offences is largely driven by assessment criteria. A change of criteria is needed to include a focus on community offences which might be seen as less serious but which lead to the broken windows phenomenon and estates becoming no-go areas for the Garda Síochána and go-go areas for paramilitaries. Without community policing, one's friendly neighbourhood paramilitary is likely to offer to fill the gap. People like me are left at public meetings saying vigilantism is no answer, yet people's rage is so great that they will look for any remedy which appears to dispel some of the horror they experience.

I hope the Minister has learned a little more about the crisis confronting so many working-class communities and the abject failure of the Government to make a serious response.

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