Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to start with that issue. It was quite bizarre, and it was lucky happenstance that the person who came across the loaded Garda submachine gun was a responsible citizen who brought it to Store Street Garda station. Does the Taoiseach have any information that would be of some assistance on that, even an initial assessment?

Mr. Michael Stone has done good work, and he should be commended, as indeed should those on the various working groups. Despite that, there is a mountain to climb. Let me demonstrate what I mean by that. The assistant Garda commissioner, Mr. Pat Leahy, revealed that more than 500 death threats have been issued to individuals across Dublin in recent years. Of the most serious of these threats, ten were made against persons in the north inner city, many of them, though not all, related to the ongoing feud. I will tell the Taoiseach that elderly people are frightened in many of our neighbourhoods. Children in the neighbourhoods have been exposed to terrible violence, some of them having witnessed murder in broad daylight.

There is a concern among the schools to support these children through the trauma and impact of all of this. I quoted the assistant commissioner, and I reiterate that it is his view that this feud, as it is called, is not likely to end any time soon. As welcome as the funding has been for the north inner city, it has been piecemeal and, to use the old expression, been like using a Band-Aid where radical surgery is required. At the root of all these issues, however we come at them, is poverty. With regard to the issue of housing, I acknowledge the sod has been turned, at last, on O'Devaney Gardens in the north west of the inner city, which is not covered by this forum or working group. If the Taoiseach wants to make a big difference, big money should be spent on the regeneration of Ballybough House, where people live in cramped, damp conditions in which nobody should be asked to live. They are great families and great children.

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