Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. Community safety is about people being safe, and just as importantly, feeling safe. We want visitors to Dublin to be able to enjoy our vibrant, historic capital city. We want the people who live in it to experience it as a friendly, safe place to bring up their families and go about their lives. We want those who work in the city to have peace of mind that Dublin is a safe, welcoming place to do business. I think we all agree with those statements. To achieve this, it is vital that we have a shared approach.

As Minister for Justice, I am acutely aware of the effect that crime and antisocial behaviour can have on the quality of life for all communities. As an individual, I am well aware of the impact that crime has on individuals. An Garda Síochána will always be there to respond to local concerns and high-visibility policing is key to ensuring everyone in our capital city feels safe and is safe. While policing is of course central to public safety, there are many other factors which contribute to people feeling safe as they live, work and visit Dublin. Building stronger, safer communities is a collective responsibility across all of Government, our local authorities and State agencies. On a practical level, it means having adequate public lighting and infrastructure and ensuring simple things, such as rubbish being collected regularly from our main thoroughfares. It means examining whether emergency services are appropriately located. I am aware that Dublin City Council is undertaking an audit of emergency services in the city centre, which is welcome. This collaborative approach is further reflected today by the participation of my Government colleagues from other Departments, including the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Department of Health.

Our community safety policy focuses Government services on prevention and early interventions. To be clear, we will always support communities and people who want and deserve to be safe on their streets. Communities which need our help will get it. People who deserve to be punished will be punished. The most effective way we can improve community safety over the longer term is through the empowerment of local communities, combined with support from the State. However, as Minister for Justice, I will always focus on resources and support An Garda Síochána to ensure we have a policing response in which people in Dublin have confidence. Along with the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, I regularly discuss and engage with the Garda Commissioner and his team on issues of safety, not just in Dublin but across the country. I have spoken with Angela Willis, assistant commissioner for the Dublin metropolitan region, about this issue in recent weeks.

I have visited our front-line Garda stations such as Pearse Street and Store Street to hear the first-hand perspectives of gardaí there on their work and to thank them, because our gardaí do fantastic work, although they might not always get credit for it. I have also listened to and spoken to business owners and residents in Dublin city.

A number of ongoing enforcement operations are in place that are aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour. As the House will be aware, Garda Operation Citizen commenced on 22 October 2021. Operation Citizen aims to reassure the public that Dublin is a safe place to live and work through high-visibility patrolling and community engagement. Operation Citizen achieves these aims through increased patrols of the city centre, including 100 Garda members patrolling each weekend evening. These increased patrols are supported by members from the Garda public order unit and other specialist units, specifically assigned to the city centre. There are also Garda members assigned specifically to patrol the River Liffey boardwalks and their environs at night.

Operation Citizen is not an isolated response. It works in tandem with a number of different operations currently ongoing in the city centre. These include Operation Saul, which aims to provide a safer environment for commuters who are travelling in the Dublin metropolitan region, and Operation Spire, which is part of an ongoing strategy by gardaí in Store Street aimed at targeting anti-social behaviour and drug dealing on O'Connell Street. To support Operation Citizen further, a property located at 13A Upper O'Connell Street is currently being redeveloped as a Garda station to enhance the high-visibility policing service in Dublin city centre. The new station will have a public office for members of the public to seek support and report crimes and to provide support to victims of crime when they come in.

It will serve as a hub which on-duty gardaí can report to directly without the need to return to their designated station, as well as being the parade location for Operation Citizen. It will be where members meet, go through what they will do for the day, and the place from which they go about the operation. This new station will increase the visible presence of An Garda Síochána on O'Connell Street and enhance the ability of the gardaí to respond efficiently to criminal activity. In advance of the completion of refurbishment works for the new station, a high-visibility Garda command vehicle has been placed on O'Connell Street and has been manned. Additionally, members assigned to Operation Citizen are proactively engaging with as many businesses operating in the city as possible each week.

I believe the efforts of An Garda Síochána, supported by my Department, are having an effect. Since Operation Citizen started last year, more than 7,000 arrests have been made and over €6 million worth of suspected illegal drugs have been seized. I am pleased to note that in October 2022, Dublin city centre was awarded purple flag status. This award, which is an international accreditation, recognises Dublin's excellence in its management of the night-time economy. Dublin is one of 40 cities in Europe that have attained the purple flag status. Among the criteria considered in granting this award are crime rates and the willingness of people to go into the city centre after dark. It is a positive reflection on our city overall.

Protecting our communities and reducing anti-social behaviour is, as I have said, a priority for me and all of Government, so it requires a whole-of-Government response. A key part of this is the ongoing support of the Government for An Garda Síochána, including an unprecedented budget of €2.14 billion, which was allocated this year. This level of funding will support recruitment of up to 1,000 new Garda members and an additional 400 Garda staff in 2023. Coupled with further reassignments of gardaí to operational front-line policing and the continued roll-out of the new operational model, with its focus on community engagement, I am confident that An Garda Síochána will continue to protect communities, combat anti-social behaviour and help to ensure that Dublin's city centre remains a safe place for all.

The most effective way that we can improve community safety over the longer term, as I mentioned, is through the empowerment of local communities, combined with support from the State. This is where community safety partnerships come into play. Our new local community safety partnerships will form a core part of how we implement this collective responsibility to make our communities safer for all.

They provide a forum for State agencies and local community representatives to work together to act on community concerns. Membership of the partnerships will be broader than that of the existing joint policing committees and will include residents, community representatives, business and education sector representation, relevant public services including the HSE, Tusla, An Garda Síochána and local authorities, as well as members of the local council. Three pilot local community safety partnerships have been established, as well as the Drogheda implementation board that followed on from the north inner city task force. We have independent chairs and full-time co-ordinators appointed to each of the pilots, including in Dublin's north inner city. Each partnership is in its first year of operation and is currently undertaking engagement work with the local communities in its area. In Longford the partnership's plan is already published and in the inner city and Waterford, the partnerships are moving in that direction. They have started much of the work and put a lot of plans in place.

The safety needs of every community are different and those who understand those needs best are the community themselves. This morning I was just outside Dundalk, where all the community safety partnerships, combined with those already in operation in the North, as well as the Drogheda implementation board, came together for the first time to share their knowledge and experience. It is clear the model we are putting in place and the one already in place in the North is working. It is very effective and brings communities together, while addressing the fact each community is different and requires a different response. That it is supported by Government is an important part of that.

Another key support from my Department that will support these partnerships is the community safety innovation fund, CSIF. Launched in April, the fund redirects money that is the proceeds of crime, having been seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau and others. This was called for for some time. My colleagues, Deputies Richmond and O'Dowd, along with many of our local councillors and a former chief superintendent in Louth, Christy Mangan, have consistently called for money that has been taken from criminals to go directly back into communities so we can show there is a direct link between the seizure of proceeds of crime and improving community safety outcomes.

Last month, I announced the allocation of funding for 22 projects under the CSIF. The interest in the fund was even better than we could have anticipated. We received 124 applications from groups in our communities that want to make a real difference and are working on new and innovative ways to protect and improve their local areas. Based on the high quality of proposals received, I believe the successful projects have the potential to have a real impact on their respective communities. Where these projects work, I want them to be replicated in other communities across the country. I encourage those who did not receive funding this year to apply again. The budget has gone from €2 million to €3 million for next year and I intend for that funding to continue to increase. I am especially pleased to note six innovation projects in the Dublin region received funding this year, including the community safety wardens project around Wolfe Tone Square in Dublin's north inner city, and a number of projects focusing on improving outcomes for young people. In addition, a proposal to extend the community safety wardens proposal to cover O'Connell Street and surrounding areas is currently being finalised and this will be expanded.

Youth justice is about ensuring we can support and work with our young people and trying to put resources in place before things get to an even more difficult situation where prison is often the only resort. Improving outcomes for our young people and diverting those most at risk away from crime must be a key response to antisocial behaviour in Dublin and across the country. An additional allocation of €6.7 million was provided in budget 2022 and another €2.5 million in 2023 to ensure the delivery of key objectives in the Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, in particular the expansion and deepening of the services offered to young people by the youth diversion projects, which are fully funded by my Department. These projects provide an invaluable support to complement the work of An Garda Síochána in addressing youth crime and also protecting local communities.

I commend the outstanding work of An Garda Síochána in supporting our young people by working with the youth diversion projects, as well as all the teams in those projects across the country. In one example of this, An Garda Síochána, in association with the FAI and local authorities, runs the late night soccer league programme in the Dublin metropolitan region. It is a diversionary programme incorporating soccer leagues at various locations across Dublin and is aimed at encouraging at-risk young people to participate in meaningful activities, thereby reducing antisocial behaviour involving young people in disadvantaged areas. It also gives young people something to do, which is so often why people turn to crime. The initiative is based around the concept of using football as a tool for social inclusion and learning and is just one example of the many ongoing efforts by An Garda Síochána to reduce antisocial behaviour and to protect our communities.

A total allocation of €23.8 million provided in this year's budget to youth justice services will allow for continued good work in this field that is backed by evidence-based policy and practice. In line with the principles underpinning the Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, the significant increase in youth justice funding will be deployed with the assistance of the best available research and expert evidence. In the Department we are investing in ensuring any policy, programme or plan we roll out is underpinned by evidence and that it will have the effect and bring about the change we need.

I am conscious a number of communities have been affected by antisocial behaviour and there were incidents in the Cherry Orchard and Ballyfermot areas earlier in the year. Local Garda management immediately enhanced the high-visibility policing presence, together with the support and assistance of the Garda public order unit over the course of a number of weekends. This high-visibility policing has continued to date. However, the response should not just be about policing. Having visited the area and spoken to community workers and others, they are looking for a holistic and co-ordinated community safety-style approach. That is what is being worked on and it will be delivered.

As the Garda Commissioner has stated, accommodation is a crucial element of facilitating policing activities and we must further future-proof in this area. It is for this reason An Garda Síochána continue to engage with the Office of Public Works, OPW, on capital and maintenance work across Ireland. While still under discussion, this includes what the Commissioner has referred to as an exciting development of a substantial new Garda station and facilities on Dublin City Council lands at the comer of the R139 and the Malahide Road at Northern Cross. I am also pleased to say the new Garda building on Military Road will open in the coming weeks. The completed building will represent a major investment in policing from the Office of Public Works and the Department of Justice, as well as an investment in our city centre.

I reiterate that combating antisocial behaviour and keeping communities safe, particularly with regard to Dublin city centre, encompasses the work of multiple Departments and State agencies. My Government colleagues will outline throughout the debate the ongoing work of their Departments in this area and I am glad to be here with them today to reaffirm the Government's commitment to this issue. My Department will always support An Garda Síochána and all the justice agencies to make Dublin city centre safe for all. We will work with all colleagues in this House because we all have the same objective of reaching this goal.

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