Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Eight men have been murdered as part of a criminal gang feud in Dublin, and the impact of this on the whole community, especially in the north inner city, has been enormous. Many residents - families and their children - are living in fear. The Taoiseach met with some of them recently and he quite rightly praised and commended their resilience and steadfastness. Since then, as well as the fear arising from the gang feud and the ongoing drugs trade in that area, there is also a concern that once the media focus moves off onto other issues the commitments and promises of support from the Government will not be delivered. The Taoiseach will know that what the people want and need is an integrated plan for the social, economic, educational and community development of their community. They are looking for funding, projects, jobs, counsellors, homes, teachers for children, Garda youth diversion projects, addiction services and so on.

The Taoiseach asked recently for the terms of reference of the community coalition in Dublin's north inner city and, with their permission, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald provided him with this. He agreed to meet with representatives of the coalition and bring back proposals to them about the task force and its terms of reference and so on. I do not want to presume or make judgment on what the Taoiseach said earlier but, if I heard him properly, he said he was going to the constituency tomorrow and appears to have agreed the terms of reference. Will he give us some sense of the terms of reference and recommit to consulting in good faith with the people he met, given the seriousness of the issues involved? It is all about empowering people. These people have empowered themselves. The Taoiseach said in an earlier discussion here that there appeared to be a gap between what has happened in here and what is happening down there. I challenged the Taoiseach on this. I said it is not that there appears to be a gap; there is a gap. The Taoiseach made a firm commitment about consultation and going back to consult with the folks he met previously. I ask him to give us as much information as he can on that.

I request an update on the implementation of the recommendations contained in the Garda Inspectorate report, Changing Policing in Ireland, and I also request that he address the concern about a whole range of Garda appointments that were made. I do not want to go through them all, as I do not want to take up other people's time. A whole range of promotions were made which could and should have been made by the policing authority, but there was a rush to do this at the request of the Garda Commissioner before the authority was authorised to do it. Is the Taoiseach concerned about this? It strikes me as being something that does not bode well for what we are trying to do in terms of a new beginning to policing, or at least the effort to reform the gardaí so that it is a service that its men and women deserve and that those whom they mind deserve also.

See this speech in context