Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the debate and in particular the emphasis on the centrality of community safety at the heart of a new community policing strategy. The Commission on the Future of Policing established that human rights are at the heart of what the Garda does. The right to feel safe in one's own community is a fundamental right that we need to promote. The sad reality is that this right is not equally distributed across our community.

The Minister, Deputy McEntee, rightly drew attention to the work done by Jack Nolan in the community of Darndale, Moatview and Belcamp, showing that this is a community where community safety is not the prevailing mood of what people experience on the ground. The reality is that there is too much impact of gangs. Their influence is too wide. The abuse of drugs is too widespread. Its impact in diverting young people away from other opportunities is clear. The intimidation and fear that is felt by families is a real problem undermining the attempts not to only police but to transform this community. We know that this is one of the communities with very low rates of education and progression to further education compared with the rest of the country and with neighbouring areas. We need to see a really strong response to this.

While I welcome the pilot partnerships the Minister has announced, I am disappointed that they do not include this community where such excellent work has been done. I also believe that the partnerships as they are now framed fall short of what we will need if we are to respond in communities like the one in Darndale, Moatview and Belcamp which has deeply embedded problems. The commitment and the range of engagement of outside agencies is too narrow. We need to seek genuine cross-Government commitment if this is to realise the sort of shift that is envisaged in Jack Nolan's work.

The history of community policing does not instil full confidence in communities that this will be followed through in the way in which the Commission on the Future of Policing envisaged. It pointed to the central role of the entire Garda district and not just some gardaí, described as community gardaí, in keeping communities safe and using the very best modern techniques to deliver that within that community. Our past experience is that when the pressure has come on, the needs of central units to respond to other needs had seen community policing put to one side. This must represent a very dramatic shift if we are to see a new approach genuinely becoming embedded in our future policing.

From my experience, delivering change on the scale that the Minister and the Commission on the Future of Policing envisage needs four things. We need a vision that is very ambitious. It needs to be spelt out. This can be seen in Jack Nolan's work in his community. It is about disrupting, dismantling and diverting people from what is now a very widespread impact of the drugs trade and a gang culture that is there. That will take resources and sustained effort. We need wrap-around youth services. We need bespoke education programmes. We need physical demonstration of a change in approach. That will not happen from the scale of the partnerships that are now envisaged.

We also need inspired leadership.

The very best of Garda resources need to be deployed in these partnership areas with the time, commitment and consistency of service to deliver a project on this scale in those areas. Gardaí should get recognition and be considered for promotion if they do complete that work. We do not want to see quality people promoted out to some other task that comes along. We need to see authority for such an initiative and by that I mean that we need to be able to change the conventional approach in other services in order to deliver the vision that has been spelled out.

Finally, a budget will be required. This means that we must commit additional resources and be creative in the use of those resources in areas where community safety is simply not being delivered. I am sure my colleague from Drogheda, Deputy O'Dowd, will have similar comments to make on some of the strains in his area. We need to respond to this in a different way. While I welcome the first step on the road that the Department of Justice is taking here, a higher level of commitment is required from within that Department and An Garda Síochána. There is also a need for a great deal more resources from other Departments and across Government.

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