Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State. It might seem like it takes a lot of money to run the Limerick scheme compared with community CCTV schemes, particularly in more compact areas. However, Limerick is a unique place and not just because I am saying it is. It is unique because, unfortunately, we have eight of the top ten most deprived areas in the State. We have some of the best but poorest communities in the entire country. Those communities need extra support. They got that extra support through regeneration, which is now being wound down. There must be a mechanism devised by which the funding that was in the Department of housing, and it is not within that Department's competence to be funding CCTV, can be transferred to the Department of justice because this is a policing and public safety issue.

Ultimately, it also a cost-saving issue because it reduces the cost of investigation, it reduces the cost to the Courts Service because we have a higher than average guilty plea rate and it takes bad faith actors off the street. I always think of a woman in her late 70s called Rose Hanrahan who was murdered in December 2017 in Thomondgate in Limerick. If it was not for these cameras, Rose's murderer would not have been apprehended, charged and convicted. It was done because the vile individual who set upon Rose that night was caught on this system of cameras.

At the moment, I am very worried there are the seeds of a feud in Limerick again. We really need these cameras to deal with that properly. We need a proper, long-term funding solution from Government.

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