Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The right to feel safe in your home, in your community and on the streets is precious. As a TD for Dublin Central, I represent communities who could write volumes on how that right has been systematically taken away from them.

It is shameful that families who live in strong, resilient and vibrant communities, people who work in the centre of Dublin and those who visit our capital city are so often met with a climate of fear and a sense of constantly looking over their shoulder, one which has developed because of criminal gangs who prey on communities but also because of open drug dealing, drug taking, on-street nuisance drinking and threatening antisocial behaviour. This sense of danger has grown, and in core areas of Dublin city centre, the neglect has been spectacular. Places such as Talbot Street, O'Connell Street, Mary Street and the quays were places of business, of busyness, of hustle and bustle and yet they have been allowed go to rack and ruin.

Every community group I speak to, every youth group and youth diversion project all say the same thing: that people’s sense of safety is gone largely because of a lack of Garda visibility and presence, and that is because there are not enough front-line gardaí doing what they do best on the street, on the beat, in the community.

The hard truth is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have presided over devastating cuts to community garda numbers. For example, in the Dublin north central area the community had 139 community gardaí in 2014. By the end of last year, that was down to just 82. That represents a cut of 40%. How on earth are communities meant to feel safe when gardaí do not have the manpower and the resources they need?

Of course, the gardaí cannot do all the heavy lifting on their own. We need to invest ambitiously in our communities and community infrastructure and in particular in our young people. The Government needs to get its act together. We need more gardaí on our streets, and more investment in community and youth services, youth diversion programmes, rehabilitation and in our probation service. We need a response from the Government that matches the scale of the problem and we need it fast.

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