Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Recent events in the north inner city have been stark but, unfortunately, not unusual. The cycle keeps repeating, sometimes in a more dramatic fashion than other times. There is a certain element of compartmentalising this to a particular of the city and country and that resonates with what happened in the early 1980s, when the drug scourge started to become evident in that part of the country. What became very clear was it did not stay in that area, so it is very important that people do not presume that this will be compartmentalised, horrific and all as it is.

Even behind the high-profile recent gangland murders, there have been a number of other shootings, with less attention paid to them because it is a regular occurrence. Generally speaking, the areas have one element in common in that there is a culture of deprivation. There is a disproportionate number of child poverty in areas where these kinds of events occur. There is underinvestment and a proliferation of societal problems because of poor policy. That goes from underinvestment in community initiatives and diversionary programmes to housing policy; it goes right across the spectrum. If we are looking for the root cause, we do not have to look very far.

We almost have a particular mindset in this country not just in this area, but in many others, of creating problems and then solving them rather than planning, predicting and preventing, as we see in other jurisdictions with a better outcome. We tend to have a reactive rather than proactive response. There is investment in specific Garda operations after the fact, for example, rather than planning over time investment in communities and youth initiatives that would create diversionary activities. Such initiatives were the first programmes to be cut, including Young Ballymun. We are being told there is to be much investment in programmes but it is still under attack, which is quite extraordinary.

It is interesting to pay attention to what is being said by locals on the news in recent weeks. A number of women spoke about their communities and they make complete sense. They argue that there are mid-level players in communities who demonstrate a value in crime as they drive fancy cars and wear the latest fashion. It shows there is a benefit to it.

That needs to be tackled if we are to prevent the situation being allowed to go out of control, as happened in Limerick, where there had to be a large reactive response because although it was plain that a problem was building, it was not addressed across the spectrum in a strategic way. It is also at that level that we need to look at issues such as the assets these individuals are building up and how these empires are built. They do not just emerge; they are built by virtue of low- and mid-level activity and then we end up with these people who are very difficult to deal with and who often operate from outside of the country.

We were told earlier that community policing is key, and it is. What annoys me is the distribution of gardaí. I am going to divert to my constituency in drawing attention to this because there are broad disparities in how gardaí are dispersed. Every year a policing plan is introduced to the Dáil and it is the same every year, with a little bit of a tweak here and there, yet crime rates are different in various parts of the country and the population grows and falls, as can be seen particularly clearly in years where there is a census of population. Looking at community gardaí, there are zero in Kildare, according to the latest statistics. Then in Tipperary there are 90. In the Dublin metropolitan region north there are 68 gardaí. Why would that region have fewer community gardaí than Tipperary? Some of this just does not make sense. The low-level stuff, the antisocial stuff that was talked about earlier, happens everywhere, and unless that information can be gathered, how can we respond to it? Every year there is a policing plan and I have raised this with the Minister, who tells me that it is the Garda Commissioner who needs to deal with this. When I go to the Garda Commissioner, they divert me to the assistant commissioner, but the assistant commissioner does not have responsibility for allocation of gardaí, so I am going around in circles.

This problem is not only about the distribution of gardaí and different elements of policing: if one looks, for example, at the money that is allocated to youth programmes, there is no logic to it either. We do not tend to see these as issues that one looks at strategically before allocating funding on the basis of need. If we did that, we would get better outcomes. I table parliamentary questions all the time to update these statistics and I have sent a copy of these to the new policing authority, which is looking at the policing plan. Hopefully that will make a difference. Gardaí need to be distributed on the basis of need, which includes crime rates and population. For example, I found that Kildare has the fourth lowest rate of drug offences per 100,000 of the population and the third lowest rate of drivers driving under the influence per 100,000 of the population. One might think that it would be great to go and live in Kildare if it is that good. The reality is that we have the lowest ratio of gardaí to population and these are the kind of crimes that are not caught, because we need a proactive policing programme to catch them. Essentially we are saying we do not count them, we do not see them, so they do not happen. That is not the way to police. I am obviously using Kildare because it is an area I am very familiar with. The same argument could be made for Meath or Wexford. One of the things those areas have in common is a high population growth rate without a response in terms of investment in resources, such as gardaí, youth services or HSE services, and so on. It is always playing catch-up. The point I am trying to make is that unless we do it strategically and start planning, predicting and looking at the evidence, we will continue to have this pattern. I do not consider it an acceptable way to deal with something as important as people's safety and security.

I talked to many gardaí on the doorsteps during the campaign and even when resources exist, the issue of the kind of equipment they are provided with came up several times. It was, therefore, not a big surprise when it emerged as an issue at the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, conference, where they were saying they were not equipped and they drew attention to the fact that the first person to respond to the Regency Hotel incident was not permitted to put on a blue light, because they had not had training. If they are telling us that, we need to be listening and responding to it. In my area, for example, we have had situations where gardaí were sent out on their own to respond to a crime, where they were putting themselves at greater risk than one would expect they would need to. We have seen a situation where that happened in County Louth too, where there were tragic consequences for the garda involved. I have had gardaí tell me they are afraid, because they know the back-up is not there. It is putting them at risk as well.

We are looking at areas of crime, but the under-resourcing of white collar crime is a major issue. The Social Democrats have suggested an anti-corruption agency, because we need to change the behaviour and we need to put in sanctions. Otherwise, we are going to see things like the Panama papersand people making excuses such as that they did nothing wrong. I am asking why they did nothing wrong if they are stashing away money. I am not saying they are all doing it, but one can be absolutely certain that a decent proportion of them are. The defence is immediately put up that nothing wrong was done.

In the area of the Special Criminal Court, it has been said on a number of occasions here that this court represents a failure in many respects. I certainly would not want to put individuals at risk. We saw that it was used very effectively in respect of some of the issues that arose in Limerick. However, if we keep on relying on that as a solution, we are accepting that we can never comply with international human rights standards in terms of how our court system functions. Unless we get to the point of planning, predicting and preventing crime and unless we catch people at the lower level in relation to the kinds of crime we are talking about, which have occurred in the city here, we are always going to have a situation where people are built up to a point that we need the Special Criminal Court. I would not want to put individuals at risk of being threatened or intimidated, but we need to have an honest debate about our reactive approach to things, rather than going in a different direction and taking a more proactive approach. That includes investment in things that actually cost much less, namely, community initiatives, homework clubs, diversionary programmes and investment in sports or leisure facilities. Those things, when one looks at them over a period of time, become very cheap when one considers the kind of response that is needed now and the kind of cost that is paid by the community that is subject to the latest - it will not be the last - range of incidents around this gangland element.

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