Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While I note the Tánaiste's comments about the plans in place for the period up to 2021, it is a simple fact that this Government and the two previous Administrations allowed community policing to wither. Other stakeholders, specifically Dublin City Council, need to be mobilised. Dublin City Council management has a very poor estate management record for its 26,000 or 27,000 housing units. The Government and its predecessors cut resources to the council and other councils, including Fingal County Council, which covers some of the area I represent. This has made it very difficult to deliver front-line services.

One of the largest new urban districts in the country is being expanded on the border of Dublin Bay North and Dublin Fingal. On behalf of many local community bodies and representatives, I asked the previous Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, to carry out an audit of social infrastructure in the area, including community, education, health, child care, recreation and commercial facilities, all of which are seriously lacking. He refused point-blank to do so. I ask that the current Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, take up this challenge. The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Ring, also faces a challenge in that many community bodies argue that new regulatory structures are making it extremely difficult to deliver the types of services that have been delivered very well in the past 20 years. Put another way, excessive bureaucracy means that we seem to have gone from one extreme to the other.

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