Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I welcome the more reflective interest in crime coming from Fine Gael in this session. There was a time when Fine Gael obsessed over drunk tanks and boot camps and I am glad to see a maturity entering into the debate from the Fine Gael benches.

It is clearly a sad but timely occasion on which to discuss crime and some good ideas have emerged in this debate. Crime does not happen in splendid isolation to other events in society and the events of recent days remind us of two issues. These are the need to look at the cycle of socio-economic isolation that can occur in lower income areas and the requirement to consider urgently the provision of integration for new communities in Ireland.

I read this afternoon an excellent report by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland published only six months ago entitled Realising Integration: Migrant Workers Undertaking Essential Low Paid Work in Dublin City. I remind the House that migrants comprise approximately 10% of the population and between 10% and 11% of the workforce. Many migrants are here to stay and we must have more positive measures in place to assist integration. Many of these workers are living on the margins and are very vulnerable to social exclusion. They are in danger of becoming a subdivision of the labour force and much of their time and effort is spent simply trying to survive. A fifth of migrants only have time for work and three quarters of migrants do not mix or socialise with Irish people outside work. Two thirds of migrants live in houses and apartment blocks where no Irish people live. All these statistics reinforce the need to put in place strong integration measures. It is easy to hope that workers, particularly from Catholic countries, are integrating in a church at the weekend but the reality is that so many migrants simply do not have the time to go to church or find some other way to integrate with Irish people.

We must consider the cycle of socio-economic isolation in lower income areas, particularly for parts of Dublin where there are high rates of unemployment and there is still a significant need for the State to invest. This involves more than just community policing. The State should invest in education by providing more assistance to problem pupils and it must provide more recreational facilities.

In a city like Berlin, there seems to be an indoor heated swimming pool within five minutes of where everybody lives. We need these kinds of facilities in the heart of working class communities. We need proper planning and we should look again at the trend towards gated communities, where so many migrant workers live. We should consider opening those gates and having new developments more closely integrated physically with the existing communities. If we build strong gates, we do not have the possibility of better integration of new groups in our society.

It would be easy to blame the fall in church attendance or the rise of video games and other new media for the ills of society but we should not excuse this House of its responsibilities in tackling these two issues. We need a more concerted approach from the Garda in addressing the matter but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Crime is part of the many other issues that need to be tackled in society, such as sports facilities, education, proper housing and better planning.

It is only when we tackle all these issues together that we can provide a meaningful approach to particular types of crime that society currently focuses on. Violent crime has always been part of Irish society but there is greater coverage in the media of the brutal and violent incidents that have occurred in recent years. The appalling deaths we have seen over the past week really show us that more action is required. However, rather than a knee-jerk reaction of shoving more gardaí on the street or having more restrictive measures, we need to look at those other factors. Only then will we be able truly to tackle the ills of society. It is about integration and assisting lower income communities.

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