Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for bringing this debate forward and for his helpful contribution in listening to the statements of Members. Deputy Richmond is right. We do not say often enough that we love Dublin. As somebody who grew up and spends a lot of time there, it is a place I absolutely adore. It is for that very reason I want to fight for it. There are, without question, some problems that exist on the streets of Dublin. We could talk for hours about its many wonderful characteristics and attributes, and the people of Dublin, wherever they may come from, who spend their time in our city.

When problems emerge in our city and when, as happened a couple of weeks ago, the national broadcaster took an interest in a particular street on a particular day, too often we ask "Who is in charge?". Dublin has a democratic deficit. The reason I have been calling for statements on the city of Dublin for over a year - the first time the Business Committee agreed to statements on Dublin was in November of last year - is because I want to get some sense of collective control. There has to be a place for Parliament when it comes to our capital city.

The House will hear me talk about Dublin City Council quite a bit. I often do so in negative terms, because we can all do better. I want to enhance local government not just in this city but throughout Ireland. The council will often say it can only go so far in light of its remit. When issues pop up around the city that pertain mostly to addiction, An Garda Síochána will rightfully say that it can police the problem of addiction. I agree with that up to a point. The HSE has a responsibility, as does the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, when it comes to tackling dereliction. There are a multitude of vast and complex problems that Parliament must take an interest in if we are to reach the degree of satisfaction in respect of our city that we all want to reach.

It was the Government's decision to frame these statements as supporting the development of Dublin through safety initiatives and the appropriate provision of emergency and other services. That is probably not how I would frame it, but I am happy to start there. I do not believe there is one policing solution to the problems on the streets of Dublin. I know Ministers and contributors across the Chamber have acknowledged that to a degree but I want to go into it in more detail. There are short-, medium- and long-term solutions regarding the issues of safety in Dublin.

If we start by looking at long-term solutions, let us begin from a very simple premise. I am delighted that the Minister of State, who has responsibility for the national drugs strategy is with us. We can all agree that wherever they come from and whatever their situation, nobody grows up wishing to be afflicted by the scourge of drug addiction. Nobody wants to find themselves down a lane in the capital city injecting themselves or smoking poison. If we can accept that, we might also accept that the gateways to these scourges that destroy the lives of people, not just in the past year but since heroin use first penetrated into my city in the late 1970s, are poverty, trauma and neglect. They are gateways to the scourge because people self-medicate to deal with a pain I cannot even comprehend, and yet successive generations of people for over 40 years have continued to inflict that on themselves. If we accept that, we must accept that we can no longer criminalise addiction. To continue to criminalise addiction and the means by which a person self-medicates to deal with a trauma and pain I do not believe we can fully comprehend unless we have experienced it, means that we will be back here in 12 months' or five or ten years' time repeating the same mistakes.

If we accept that we can no longer criminalise addiction, and I hope the Minister of State accepts it, surely the solution to the issues of addiction we see on the streets of Dublin involves more than policing. Decriminalisation does not absolve people of responsibility; it means that for the first time in a modern republic, we accept it as an issue that needs a compassionate health-based solution. The Minister of State might say that we already have that and I believe he is earnest in that intent but while the law still criminalises addiction, it means we do not have access to supervised detox beds on a substantial level and safe injection facilities. We have not even started the conversation about consumption rooms. All of these constitute the first steps to treating people and take them out of the lanes because a criminal response has not done us any good. To use an old trope and cliché, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. We will not get that outcome until we change our approach drastically.

The medium-term solution is found in how we design our cities. If you walk down O'Connell Street, you will find nowhere to sit down. You will not find a public bench. If you walk into the communities surrounding it, you will find very few trees and not much in the way of parks. Dublin City Council carried out a safety audit in respect of women on the streets. Cat O'Driscoll, my constituency colleague, was part of the audit last week. It surprised me to a degree because in 2013, Dublin City Council not only signed up to but committed to enacting the UN Safer Cities for Girls programme, which also carried out an audit that identified the same things, namely, dereliction, an absence of street lighting, decay of the city landscape and people hanging around creating an unsafe environment for everybody, particularly women and young girls. In particular, women and young girls of colour, people of different nationalities and the LGBTQI+ plus community feel extremely unsafe. Dublin City Council committed to addressing that, but it has done nothing. It certainly did not do much when I was on the council between 2014 and 2021. Deputy McAuliffe might question that, but I would say it was not challenged to any degree. Design is really important.

When we talk about safety in a city, the manifestations of lack of safety include crime and the consequences of addiction on the streets but there are other forms of safety. There are significant respiratory problems among people who live around O'Connell Street and in the south inner city because of congestion and the fact that we consistently send car after car through those areas and clog them up. This is to the detriment of people who live close by. Respiratory problems make the city unsafe. If you have a disability, Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome, there is nowhere in this city where you can go and use a bathroom without having to go into a coffee shop or spend some money. That makes the city unsafe. If you suffer from fatigue, there is nowhere for you to sit down in this city. That makes a city unsafe. As a result, design is key.

In the short term, without question, there is a role for policing. I welcome the fact that a police station will be opened on O'Connell Street and that we had Operation Spire and Operation Citizen. However, I do not welcome the fact that all these initiatives have done over the past couple of years is push the problems to which I refer out into the surrounding communities.

Regarding Operation Citizen and Operation Spire, when communities around Talbot Street, Liberty House, Seán McDermott Street and Hardwicke Street hear about these new initiatives, what they will rightly think - because they have experienced it for so long - is that the problems will just be transferred to other places on the merry-go-round. I was at a public meeting last night on O'Connell Street. I have no doubt that in three to four months' time we will be going to community meetings in Hardwicke Street and out as far as Ballybough because the problem will simply be pushed onto on the merry-go-round and we will be back to O'Connell Street next year. Somebody else will do a documentary and we will probably be back in here listening to Deputies talking about the state of the place unless we change it. I want more police on the street but I want quality policing. We have great gardaí but I want a community-based policing approach on O'Connell Street. I do not doubt that we need them there but we need gardaí who can link in with services such as Ana Liffey. We need more of that. It will enhance the city.

We also need to question who this city is being built for. In former working-class strongholds around Ringsend and East Wall, all you see are office blocks. A year or two years from now, or even before that, there will be nobody in those office blocks because the nature of work is changing completely. We have designed our city for a type of tech industry that will not exist. Hopefully, the industry will not go away, but the way people work there will certainly change. People will work in offices two or three days a week. We have already seen Meta halt development around those areas. We need to reinvigorate this city through housing people in it and through its culture in order that when we have shops that have lost commercial footfall to shopping centres on the M50, we can bring our artistic community into those areas and energise our city through art. That is how we enhance a city. The pride we associate with Dublin and how we project ourselves on the world stage have always been through our songs, stories, people and the communities that came here. If we are to enhance this city as a safe place through the eradication of crime, a compassionate approach to addiction and reinvigoration through art, we must make a start. This will have tangible outcomes and will make a difference. It will require joined-up collective thinking and a sense of responsibility. It will also require us to be strong, to demonstrate that leadership and to believe in this city, not just through our words but also through our actions.

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