Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Living in a safe and secure house in a safe and secure community is incredibly important to each of us and our constituents. Sadly, however, many people do not believe they live in a safe and secure house in a safe and secure community. Many are being terrorised by rural crime in their communities. While many may consider Kildare to be an urban area, almost 50% of the county is rural. Owing to the presence of motorways, there is a huge level of rural crime. I heard only at the weekend of a farmer in south Kildare who was terrorised by six men with dogs who arrived on the pretence that they were hunting. I have no doubt that they were stalking the land. There appears to be some correlation throughout the country, in particular in counties close to Dublin which contain rural areas, between people coming to hunt and stalk and robberies happening at a later stage. The particular individual in question had the presence of mind to send a text immediately to the local text alert service. I compliment the communities involved in it. They are doing a fantastic job. Within ten minutes ten members of the local community attended, not to take the law into their own hands but to show solidarity to the person being victimised. That is just one example.

There has been a failure on the part of the Government. The Minister said rural crime statistics were down, but they certainly are not. The Government closed 139 Garda barracks in rural Ireland. The barracks and local garda were the nerve centre of an area and had a lot of local knowledge and so could prevent crime, but that has been taken out of the equation. We need to increase the number of gardaí on the ground in rural communities. We need to establish a rural crime task force. We also need to increase funding for Garda supported CCTV and strengthen the bail laws.

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