Dáil debates

Thursday, 4 June 2020

Covid-19 (Justice and Equality): Statements

 

10:00 pm

Photo of Martin KennyMartin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If there is time for a reply that is fine, but I am also happy for the Minister to respond in writing.

I commend An Garda Síochána for the good work that many thousands of gardaí have done across the country during this pandemic. For many people, they have been a lifeline. This needs to be recognised and acknowledged.

I too want to comment on what happened in the United States to George Floyd. When one compares policing in the United States with policing in many other places the contrast is very stark. Many of us have watched the video of the policeman with his knee on the neck of George Floyd, holding him down for eight minutes, which resulted in the tragic loss of George Floyd's life. Had he not lost his life, would we be talking about the incident? How many hundreds more people have been in the same position and lived through it? This case has become a touchstone because of one man's death. Thousands of others have suffered similar inhumane treatment but did not die and thus did not reach the same touchstone as a point of contact in regard to the issue of racism.

Racism begins with fear. That fear quickly moves to hatred which in turn moves quickly to aggression. This is evident anywhere it develops and evolves. As has been acknowledged by other Deputies, we have a problem with racism in this country that needs to be recognised and acknowledged as well. There are people here who move in a particular direction and feed that type of attitude. We need to stand firmly against it. I acknowledge the work of the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, and his departmental staff, including on the hate speech legislation. It is hoped that whatever the formation of the new Government it will continue that work.

In regard to An Garda Síochána, as I said, I commend it for the huge work it has done and continues to do.

It must be acknowledged that community policing is at the core of keeping people safe and the service the police provide needs to be easily accessible to everyone. In the vast majority of cases, that is true, As many Deputies will acknowledge, however, in many parts of both rural and urban Ireland, there is often difficulty contacting members of An Garda Síochána when they are needed. That is something we need to recognise. I have certainly come across people in the past, though not during the present pandemic, who contacted An Garda Síochána and faced long delays in getting a response. That is simply due to not having enough bodies on the ground. That also applies to resources such as patrol cars and so on. In many areas, there are not even adequate communication services in place. All those issues need to be acknowledged and worked on into the future in order that they might be resolved.

The reality is that if we are going to build toward resolving such issues, we need to have more gardaí in place. We also need to recognise that while the work done by community gardaí in many places is excellent and they have done very well, there are some situations, which we have all come across, where they have a little bit of an attitude, especially towards young people who come from particular backgrounds. I do not think that helps and some work needs to be done on that. I spoke to senior gardaí about training officers in how they deal with youngsters who are vulnerable to going in a particular direction in order that their attitude towards them does not push them further in that direction, because that can sometimes happen.

I am sure the Minister is aware of the report by Dr. Johnny Connolly, Building Community Resilience, which looked at an area in the south inner city and found that only 1% of people in that community were involved in criminality. Yet, that area would be considered a black spot. This means that 99% of people there are law-abiding citizens who go about their business properly and they are also very damaged by the situation in many of those areas. Will the essence of that report and the lessons to be learned from it be put in place as part of a process to deliver a better service for the communities in places like the north inner city or Coolock, which my colleague will speak about, where huge damage has been done to those communities by a tiny minority of people? What can be done in order to address that?

One of the key things that can be done is implementing much more resilient engagement by the community police service and making sure gardaí are on the ground, are known and are part of the community. In many parts of rural Ireland in the past if someone travelled a rural road, he or she might be afraid to have a bald tyre or a bad tail-light because he or she would come across a Garda checkpoint somewhere. That does not happen anymore. They are not there and people say they travel everywhere and never see a garda.

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