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

My vote today is not intended to be personal to any one individual. My vote today is in the name of those who love the city in Dublin, who engage with it, who live in it, who work in it and who wish to send their children to school in it safely. Confidence in any form derives from a feeling of security. It has been a very long time since anybody who engages with the city of Dublin in the manners I have outlined has felt in any way secure. The vote I cast today will be in their name. That feeling of not being safe is particularly pronounced among women, as has been outlined, and among minorities. The evidence is very clear. However, what about people who just want to engage with the city as would be the norm in any other part of the country or in any other city? For example, who among us would wish to send our teenagers to the city of Dublin to go to the cinema? It never used to be the case that people were afraid to do that but that is the stage we have got to. That is not a norm we should have to accept.

Much has been made of the need to come together and to work in collaboration. I honestly cannot step away from the fact that, for the best part of two and a half years, we have sought such collaboration. We have proposed motions. One year and one week ago to the very day, Ministers came to this Chamber for statements on safety in the city of Dublin. We have sought collaboration but have not received anything back. I have not heard from the Minister in respect of collaboration and, in its absence, it is only justifiable for us to now seek accountability for the decisions being made while conditions increasingly worsen in the north inner city.

This is not about any one individual's compassion; far from it. It is often said that nobody has a monopoly on compassion. I believe that but this is about State indifference and State neglect of a community.

If one walks through the community that I grew up in in the north-inner city, one could not help feel that neglect. It reverberates off the walls. This is what my vote will be in the name of today. It was a point made to me last week. In any other part of the country, parents' councils assemble to get a new playing pitch, to hold bake sales or to raise money for the Christmas party. In the north-inner city, for too long parents' councils or groups of parents have engaged with me as a public representative and others only on the matter of safety so that their children do not have to walk to school through plumes of smoke and do not have to leave school and see vulnerable people in various states of intoxication, open drug dealing and open drug injection. That is not the norm anywhere else and I will not accept it for the norm of my community. There will be no return to normality.

I do not believe that those who have been charged with the administration of justice in my city while I have watched that decline over a decade are the ones to fix it. There is any number of issues that could be raised but when I vote today, I will be naming the people who love and engage in our city.

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