Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In all the recent reviews of policing, community policing has been identified as being at the heart of a really good community based policing service where people develop confidence in the police, the police can get to know people and crime can be headed off before it is committed. In the constituency shared by the Taoiseach and I, the Minister for Justice and Equality has confessed we have one sergeant and approximately 12 gardaí. Given they work over a 24 hour day in two to three shifts, the Taoiseach can work out the mathematics of how many community police required by an area of more than 100,000 people, which is bigger than Waterford and Limerick. I have drawn to the Taoiseach's attention situations near a primary school of gunmen shooting at each other. Thankfully, nobody was injured. We have also had gun attacks at a secondary school on the opposite side of the area. We have police searches in neighbourhoods of the constituency where they pick up Makarov pistols, bullets, ammunition and shotguns.

How long will it take the Taoiseach to start acting as the Taoiseach of all the people of Ireland, rather than just the rich people who will get the broadband contracts? The people of Ireland want to be safe when they take a train or the DART and when their children go out to play or meet friends in a park. Does the Taoiseach understand that people genuinely feel afraid? Drug gangs and cocaine are at their height, such as we have not seen for 30 years, and parents are besieged with drug debt but the Taoiseach has no answer.

See this speech in context