Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will take it up on her response to Senator Ruane, when she said she did not want to be too prescriptive and mentioned the broader sense of community. As the Minister knows, we will come later to the issue of community stakeholders, who are very wide and varied and come at different levels. Oireachtas Members are stakeholders. They live in communities. One of the great things about Irish democracy is that most of our parliamentarians live within their communities. That is a very strong connection. Our city and county councillors live in our communities with democratic mandates. They are not self-appointed individuals. They have a democratic mandate from the people to represent them. We need to be a little more prescriptive. We cannot be airy-fairy. I am not suggesting the Minister is saying that, but we have to be very clear and acknowledge the very significance of who our community stakeholders are. We have community networks and a whole range of things.

The other key aspect I wanted to hang on is the Minister's word, "partnership". It is all about partnership, soft intelligence, covert operations and a range of things. Every tool possible should be made available to An Garda Síochána to do its work in administering safe communities and policing, but we must do so as partners, as the Minister said. It is about partnership. We will have an opportunity later to discuss it but, fundamentally, I believe our elected people, community representatives and business people in the city of Dublin and throughout the country are also partners. It is in everyone's interest to have peaceful, orderly communities and law and order and enforcement in those communities.

As I said, we will talk about that later, but the Minister gave me an opportunity to raise it arising from her response. It is something we need to reflect on in the coming days and weeks as we go through the Bill. Again, I am not suggesting this of the Minister, but let us not be tone deaf to the requirements of community, be that ordinary citizens, and we are all ordinary citizens, or different groupings, including An Garda Síochána, liaison officers, community welfare officers and, importantly, our city and county councillors. Our TDs and Senators also have a huge role. This is our opportunity. This is where we make primary legislation and where all of us have been asked to put down amendments on this Stage and the next. This is our only opportunity, in a public forum such as this, to make the case and have it on the record that we are making that case. I hope, in all of our debate, we are not tone deaf to the needs of our public representatives.