Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

Yes, and the Minister continued to completely ignore what people had said to him in private about their concerns about the increasing level of crime.

We are paying the price now for the Minister's inactivity. We are paying the price for his bluff and bluster and his continuous exposure on the radio with his pal Sam Smyth or his other pals on other radio stations in the media generally. He is rarely off the media talking about everything under the sun except his own stewardship and when it comes to his stewardship in terms of controlling the level of crime in this country, his performance has been abysmal.

In my constituency of Dublin North-West, and the same could be repeated in a number of other constituencies, there were 38 homicides last year. The level of crime that allows that to happen is crime that is increasing over many years. I mention homicides but we are talking also about attempted murder and threatened murder using the official Garda headings. We had a 6% rise in assaults and a 9% rise in burglaries. That is what we are dealing with and the Minister's response, in the case of the Finglas area, is to reduce the number of gardaí in the community Garda service. We have fewer gardaí now in the community Garda service in Finglas, which unfortunately has registered on a regular basis in terms of serious crime, than we had three years ago. We have two Garda stations in Dublin North-West which are hovels — the Ballymun station and the Finglas station. They are long overdue——

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