Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, the Ceann Comhairle and Deputies. Community safety is about people being safe and, importantly, feeling safe in their community. At its heart, community safety is the principle that every community has the right to be and feel safe in order to thrive and flourish. Ireland is generally regarded as a safe country in international terms, with relatively low crime rates and a general feeling of safety and security. However, we recognise that this is not always the case in every community and that people living in disadvantaged areas can experience a different reality.

The Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland report recommended that reform of An Garda Síochána be undertaken to free up experienced trained members of An Garda Síochána for front-line policing duties, where their expertise would be most utilised. The report also recommended that community safety be viewed as a whole-of-government responsibility, and it recognised that simply putting more gardaí on the beat does not address the underlying issues that impact on community safety. This is why, under the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill, we are advancing a number of reforms to policing in the State, but also putting community safety measures and structures on a statutory footing, as well as recognising in law that community safety is not solely the responsibility of An Garda Síochána. It is the State's responsibility as a whole and each State service has a role to play.

The new local community safety partnerships, LCSPs, will, when the Bill is enacted, replace the existing joint policing committee structures. The LCSPs will be supported through a national governance structure and will ensure communities are safer and feel safer by making community safety a whole-of-government responsibility and priority. This structure will ensure that communities are empowered to have a strong say in what actions are prioritised by the services operating in their area, and will also have a key oversight role in ensuring those actions are followed through. This will enable the local community safety partnership to function as a forum for dialogue between the community and service providers, and should strengthen trust in the people providing services. The local community safety partnership will also work to identify specific initiatives where the community can support local services and An Garda Síochána in their community safety work, including outreach programmes.

The Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Helen McEntee, agreed in principle to establish a new community safety innovation fund in April of this year. The scheme, when established, will consider applications to allocate funds to community safety projects and other policy initiatives in the area, including the work of the new local community safety partnerships. This fund will reflect the significant successes of An Garda Síochána and the Criminal Assets Bureau in disrupting criminal activity and seizing proceeds of crime by providing additional funding for investment in community safety projects.

While State services carry out their individual responsibilities, too often their interventions rely on a reactive response to emergency and crisis situations. The aim of community safety is to focus all relevant Government services on prevention and early interventions, and the impact that a shared approach to problem solving can have in ensuring that situations do not develop to the point where they impact on the safety, or feeling of safety, of the community at large. This will mean State services working with each other and the community to ensure there is better co-ordination between services, such as educational and youth work with young people, the availability of local health and mental health services, drug prevention, housing and the built environment, and actions taken to combat alcohol and substance abuse, domestic abuse, youth crime, antisocial behaviour and hate crime. This approach has had positive results, for example, in Northern Ireland, where policing and community safety partnerships bring together members of the community alongside representatives from policing, probation, housing, youth, emergency and education services.

Often, the risk a person poses may be to themselves, but their behaviour can also negatively impact on the sense of safety of those within their community. Ensuring that people in these situations can get the right support at the right time is vital. This means harm prevention and interventions delivered proactively by the service best placed to deliver it, and doing so in a joined-up, integrated way, with other services. This will include addressing individual mental health and addiction needs, services and supports for homeless people, reduction strategies for childhood trauma and ensuring older people and other at-risk groups have access to effective supports and advocates. These are some of the key underlying issues that make communities unsafe or feel unsafe, and dealing with them in an effective way, before they reach the point where an emergency or crisis develops, is central to community safety.

Clearly, this approach goes far beyond the traditional policing response and requires all relevant State bodies and voluntary organisations to work together in a joined-up way in partnership with the local community to prioritise and address issues in their own area. Each community's issues will be different and that requires solutions tailored to the needs of that community. The local community safety partnership will be responsible for developing a tailored and prioritised local community safety plan in conjunction with both community and public services. The intention is to build the capacity of local residents to enable them to engage meaningfully in the local community safety partnership and grow local community leadership and participation. Developing this will be a key aspect of the role of the community safety co-ordinator, whose role is to support the partnership, engage the residents in the community on safety issues and link them in with the work of the partnership.

There are currently three pilot LCSPs - in Dublin's north inner city, Longford and Waterford - working to develop structures and processes to address the issues mentioned. These pilots will run for two years and the lessons learned from them will inform the eventual roll-out of a community safety partnership in every local authority area.

As Deputies will recognise, the Government is committed to improving community safety, not only through increasing the number of gardaí on our streets, but also through giving communities the structures and supports they need to feel safe and be safe. I thank the House for the time to address this issue.

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