Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Reform in the area of private security has been long needed. It is much to be lamented that the catalyst for this change has been the appalling behaviour of some security workers when evicting people from a property on Dublin's North Frederick Street and also the scenes some years back in Roscommon. Members of the public were appalled by those scenes and by gardaí standing by and allowing those scenes to develop. I do not know if anyone in this House has ever been evicted from their dwelling. I have been, and it was absolutely horrendous. It was the most awful experience of my life. I was eight months' pregnant at the time. Bad as it was that my landlord turned up, I do not know what I would have done if I had been subject to the types of scenes I have seen live-streamed on social media. We must do something about this issue because it is terrifying enough to be evicted and lose the place where you are living, without having somebody come in and adopt the type of tactics we have seen being used.

However, the matter I wish to address today is education and training for licensed security professionals. As matters stands, a number of training courses provide licences to private security workers, such as static security guards, licensed premises door supervisors and monitoring centre employees. Many workers who want to practise as security personnel may have to acquire one of these licences, and some may need to get all of them. There is a significant cost for a worker to acquire all three licences. I wrote to the Minister for Justice about this matter previously, seeking engagement with the Private Security Authority regarding education and training for licensed security personnel and the possibility of creating a single training and education course for a security licence, which would incorporate static guarding, door security and CCTV monitoring, as well as conflict resolution and self-defence. Such a course would be more cost-effective for workers seeking to work in the area and would also ensure workers can work across many different areas. That is important because there is a great deal of mobility in the sector. It would also ensure a broad-based skill set for all workers involved in this employment.

I am aware that changes are due from January 2020, with two new Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, courses due to replace the current awards. These are being developed now. I also know that a new physical intervention course is being discussed. Perhaps consideration could be given to having at least one encompassing course which would cover a multitude of skill sets and allow recipients to practise as security professionals in almost any setting, and be fully trained to do so. These are just some of the suggestions which have been made to my office by workers in this area in recent weeks. I feel they deserve to be given some consideration.

In the few seconds remaining to me, and while I have the ear of the Minister of State, I raise the issue of anti-social behaviour. It is not an issue unique to my constituency, but my constituency has featured heavily on social media in recent weeks in this regard. We are being told by the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, and the Government that we have our summer outdoors. We need a plan to police the outdoors. Many more of us will be outdoors as the weather hopefully improves, and we need a plan for an increased presence of An Garda Síochána to cope with the numbers of people who will be outside.

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