Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will certainly bring that request to the meeting next week. I think it is a reasonable one. I want to point to a few statistics that are relevant. In the last three months, we have opened 33 new international protection accommodation centres and 88 beneficiaries of temporary protection centres. That is a total of 111 centres that have been opened in the last three months. The response has, by large, been very good across communities. I thank An Garda Síochána for providing us with updated statistics on protests over about six months, which peaked in January. That number halved in the month of June when 32 protests were recorded in the greater Dublin area. That figure was well into the 70s in January. We are not getting complacent. The risk is always there, but I think the work is improving. The community recognition fund introduced by the Department of Rural and Community Development has also, in a very tangible way, acknowledged the contributions and efforts communities across the country have made by improving local infrastructure and community facilities.

See this speech in context