Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I echo the comments of my colleagues from Dublin regarding how proud we are of the city. When we talk about its problems, we are often serving to denigrate the city we are all passionate about. I am very proud of Dublin. I am proud of its representatives when they play in Croke Park, when I visit many of the community projects here and when I travel to other cities and see what we do well. If we really care about the city and the place where we live, however, we want it to be better. From my perspective, having served for ten years on Dublin City Council, and had that honour of representing the city, there are five areas on which we need to work to strengthen Dublin's hand. We do not talk about this aspect in the House enough. Allegations are often made that Dublin gets everything and that the city is growing to the detriment of rural Ireland. There are as many problems in Dublin as there are in any other part of the world. I was once struck by the phrase "All the problems of the world exist in cities, but so do all the solutions".

If we listen to our own communities, they are telling us they want people who will make strong local decisions. We need reform of local government. The Government's Dublin Citizens' Assembly on local government structures in the city is a welcome step. If I was the Taoiseach, I would take its report, work with the Members of this House who have a mandate to represent the people of Dublin and legislate and implement the recommendations. I would not waste time in putting it out to a plebiscite and having an internal committee in this House to review it. I would take the report produced by Jim Gavin and I would legislate for its findings with gusto.

If we strengthen local government in Dublin, right from having an executive mayor, whether directly or indirectly elected, down to area committee structures, we will serve the people of this city to a great degree. By doing this, we will also hold to account the agencies that are allegedly meant to serve the people of Dublin, whether it is the National Transport Authority, EirGrid, etc. Agencies operating in this State should be accountable to the representatives of the people of the city. It should not be at parliamentary level; it should be at municipal level. The local government structures in Dublin city need to change. The Dublin Citizens' Assembly recommendations, in advance of being adopted, should be seriously considered. We should also have an advanced and accelerated process of implementing them by legislation.

Returning to the issue of agencies being accountable to the people of the city, millions of euro are being poured into my area. I represent Ballymun, Finglas, Glasnevin and Santry. These millions of euro are pouring in through drug task forces, youth centres and family resource centres. A great deal of money is also coming in from Tusla and the HSE. Often, however, there is little transparency concerning how decisions are made about where the money is spent. Equally, there is little co-ordination between different agencies. We need a more co-ordinated approach to service delivery, especially in those parts of the city left with a legacy in situations whereby large housing developments were effectively abandoned. There were decades in this State when we operated a policy of human set-aside. People were allowed to live on large tracts of land without proper services.

Many of these services are now in place. We should support the people who work in them but we must co-ordinate and strengthen how they are delivered. When I attend meetings, it is too often the case that the HSE and Tusla, and senior decision-makers in those organisations, are not represented. The people empowered to make decisions are not there to be held accountable for why decisions are made. There must be stronger local government, but also co-ordinated service delivery. Representatives of Rethink Ireland addressed several Deputies yesterday about social innovation. Mention was made of funding projects such as FoodCloud, etc. The best form of social innovation we could have would be by reforming public services and ensuring that the people who work on the ground are empowered.

We should also have a realistic approach to the drugs industry in this city. If there ever was a war against drugs, we have lost it. That war is over. I can walk out of this House and purchase drugs on any street corner. People tell me there are parts of their estates where the shop, as they call it, is open all hours of the day and night. We must accept, therefore, that drugs are freely available for sale and that thousands of people are purchasing these products. In fact, in my community, the drugs industry is probably one of the single largest employers. This is a very sad thing to say, but as other Deputies have said, it is a realistic response to the trauma that often exists. Many Deputies might not be aware of what a trauma-informed community is, but this is no different than the trauma that existed in previous decades when many parents, often men, languished in pubs. Many of them were the people who came out and fought against drugs in their communities.

The debate on drugs has, though, moved on from the anti-drugs marches. At that time, the concern was about the substance. It was felt that if we were to allow the substance to take hold it would ravage our communities and impact people's lives. We must stop thinking about the substance because the industry has a far greater impact on my area than the substance has on individuals. This is not to say that taking drugs is a positive thing or that I would necessarily agree with legalising drugs or with them being freely available. What I am saying is that there are criminal gangs - we all know their names - and they have a more detrimental impact on the safety of communities than the substances they are selling. We must, then, have trauma-informed communities and have the citizens' assembly on drugs next year and legislate for the implementation of its findings.

We have had a great deal of discussion at the policy level around the issue of the decriminalisation of drugs. I do not believe this conversation has happened at community level. Many families of people with addictions would be very much opposed to any sort of liberalisation, as they might say, of drugs because they do not want what happened to their family member to happen to any other person. We must engage with those communities and talk to them about what decriminalisation or drug reform might look like.

We must also address the question of housing. When I was elected to this House in February 2020, the only way the local authority I had left could provide housing was through large-scale, low-income, single-tenure housing. This was the only policy instrument available to local authorities. We could all criticise the Housing for All policy in respect of delivery and other aspects, but we can say with certainty now that local authorities have all the policy instruments to develop mixed-income, mixed-tenure public housing. They have the financial and legislative policy resources for cost-rental, owner-occupied affordable purchase and social housing.

The days of building places like Ballymun and Finglas, and concentrating low-income people in one place, and then not having the services to support those communities, should be gone. When we plan new communities, local authorities can now have this mix that we often debated on Dublin City Council regarding what percentage of what categories would go into which estates. We have now given local authorities the power to build these mixed-income, mixed-tenure estates. I wish to ensure that this idea of mixed-income, mixed-tenure and well-planned estates is embedded in the housing provision in future. This has been done. We have legislated for it in this House. We must now ensure that local authorities implement it.

The final proposal I have for Dublin concerns our economic success. We know all the things we have spoken about here often require resources. We should not underestimate the positive role that business, enterprise and economic development play in our city.

Among these are small operations where somebody starts his or her own business. It does not have to be an innovative idea that will change the world. It can be something mundane as far as a policy expert is concerned. It can be about providing a service, but that person setting up that small business has a huge impact in his or her local community. He or she is often the person who sponsors the GAA club quicker than any chain of stores. That impact, from that person in a small business right up to some of the biggest employers we have in the city, is critically important to this city being successful. There has to be a balance between those whom the city is for, but I go back to a comment that was made to me once by a company investing in Dublin that a great city to invest in is a great city to live in. If someone is making a decision to come here to build an office block, to own a piece of property and to do his or her business here, his or her managers, the people they work for and the people they are looking to attract and retain want a positive city to live in. If we want Dublin to be a successful economic city, we must make it a great city to live in too. By having stronger local government, co-ordinated public services that are connected with communities and a realistic approach to the drugs industry, if we build mixed-income and mixed tenure communities that are well planned, and if we secure economic success and investment, we can make Dublin an even greater place than it is today.

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