Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Ó Snodaigh has said, the scenes played out last night in social media were shocking for many but they are not shocking for the residents of the area who have been putting up with this kind of thing night after night for months.

Some of us local representatives have been working together to raise the issue by working with the community and with community development organisations. Excellent work is being done in the community but the funding is constantly on a knife edge. We need to be looking at how we can work with the community, which wants to see an end to this kind of behaviour. As my colleague has said, we need to see more gardaí on the beat and to see a higher level of community policing. Based on replies to parliamentary questions, only approximately 6% of the local Garda station's complement is dedicated towards community policing. This compares to a national average of 19%, to 13% in other areas, or even 66%, I believe, in Carlow. I appreciate that many of the decisions on community policing are made at a divisional level but they are made in the context of the wider manpower available. We need, therefore, to look at the manpower that is available to the Garda in order that its members can get out on the beat regularly and build up the relationships they need in this community to enforce the law effectively.

Communities like Cherry Orchard feel marginalised, ignored and invisible because this kind of behaviour has been happening. When communities feel so marginalised, this kind of behaviour is inevitable. We need to invest in these communities but we also need to show them that we care about them by putting gardaí on their streets to protect the community.

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