Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Strangely enough, I received a very prompt response from RTE yesterday on the issue I had raised about our national games. It does watch what we are doing. The response was not very constructive, but we will follow up on it.

Anti-social behaviour is rife. In a research paper entitled, Tackling anti-social behaviour: international problems, indigenous solutions, Jacinta Cunneen, a research fellow at the University of Limerick, states: "It incorporates diverse low and high-level deviant behaviours with a set of unconnected ideas about risk, crime and management underpinning it". In recent years we have seen where people cannot travel on buses or the Luas. People do not feel safe on O'Connell Street or other streets in Dublin. What is not carried in the media is that anti-social behaviour is also rife in rural Ireland. In the past week I have seen in my own town, Carrick-on-Suir, vacant houses being attacked and burned. In other parts of the country private property has been maliciously attacked for no reason. Dogs and animals have been taken and killed; in some cases they have been hung over lines and electrocuted or burned. Elderly people have also been attacked. The most frightening incident about which I have heard in my many years in public life happened this week in Nenagh, County Tipperary, where a 52 year old man who was out for a walk with his dog was set upon by schoolchildren and almost kicked to death on the street. That is disgraceful. The Garda has been doing its best and millions of euro has been invested in CCTV cameras across the country. We had them installed in Carrick-on-Suir and it has helped in tackling anti-social behaviour.