Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

I think the Minister misunderstood what I was implying when I spoke about the increased presence of gardaí in the city centre. I was not suggesting for a second that gardaí were being taken from various Garda stations and being brought into the city centre. What I was suggesting was that perhaps there is a policy of containment of problems in residential areas such that they are not coming into commercial areas. That is the feedback I get from residents.

There was an initiative in the north inner city ten or 12 years ago called the small area policing initiative. Gardaí had the responsibility to knock on people's doors and introduce themselves. They were tasked with knocking on every door in the area to introduce themselves and explain that they were the local gardaí. It worked phenomenally well. It created a presence whereby people knew their gardaí and got the sense that the gardaí were there for them. In the decades since, that has been stripped away for a variety of reasons, which I do not want to get into now. When we lost the that, we lost our sense of gardaí in the community, tackling issues and building relationships there. We do not have this any more. The prioritisation seems to be angled towards what I refer to as the commercial city centre. I understand why this is. Two years ago, I was here speaking about the issues in that area. We need to get both right at the same time.

Even though we are saying there has been an increased Garda presence in the city centre, I do not know whether the Minister has ever walked along O'Connell Street or gone over O'Connell Bridge at 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

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