Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 25, between lines 6 and 7, to insert the following: “(d) preserving safety and security in our communities,”.

Amendment No. 12 seeks to provide an additional function for An Garda Síochána under the Bill to provide policing services with the objective of preserving safety in our communities. As drafted, the relevant section does not make reference to the duty of An Garda Síochána to promote or preserve community safety, which we feel is a missed opportunity. There are provisions that relate to preserving peace and public order, so it might be seen that promoting safety is implied within that. However, I think it is worth being explicit about the role of An Garda Síochána alongside the community as a whole, as I already referenced, in promoting and preserving community safety. This was a clear recommendation from the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, COFPI, so I ask the Minister to speak to the rationale for omitting this provision from the Bill.

There is a significant issue in the Bill that is not addressed directly by this amendment but in respect of which I may seek to table an amendment on Report Stage, which is the absence of a definition of community safety, as I spoke to in the last grouping. With this being omitted, we are left a little bit in a space of uncertainty about what safety means in the context of the Bill, which ultimately impacts policing. I do not mean being prescriptive in terms of groups of scenarios but a definition in terms of intention of what community safety is. The Bill aims to provide for the generational reform of our policing services, so there is a real opportunity for us to reframe our conceptualisation of what policing is and what it sets out to achieve.

I mentioned already the issue with an “us and them” conceptualisation of crime and criminality. I believe that in excluding explicit references to the objective of preserving safety and security and also not being expressly clear about what safety looks like, we risk reinforcing the othering of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system, which does not serve the best interest of Irish society. I will not go into too much detail on that now.

I refer to when we look at keeping the peace or public order, when we think people who are engaging in particular scenarios and then when we think of safety. In working with people who are in the prison system or who have engaged in various different levels of criminality throughout their lifetime, you will often come to realise when you sit down with them as individuals in a space where there is a relationship or piece of work going on that they too grew up in that community not feeling safe. You can be the perpetrator of violence while also growing up being the victim of that violence. Usually perpetrators were not perpetrators before they were victims. Usually they have been victims of that lack of safety. Yet somehow we remove safety as a thing they may feel when they are in that guise of perpetrator or “us and them”. Most people involved in criminal activity, if you get right down to the heart of it, in and of themselves do not feel safe or grew up in environments or childhoods that were not very safe.

Amendment No. 13 relates to page 25. It would insert “preventing harm to classes of persons who are disadvantaged by reference to the following factors”, and I will not go into the factors. Basically, in respect of the functions of An Garda Síochána, the Bill charges the Garda with the duty to provide policing services with the objective of preventing harm to individuals, in particular those who are vulnerable or at risk. However, the Bill does not provide that An Garda Síochána has the same duty in respect of particular groups of people that we know are subject to discrimination and harassment on account of their membership of that group. We have taken the equality Acts as our reference point for this amendment, charging the Garda with the function of protecting groups of people who are disadvantaged based on their socioeconomic status, gender, civil or family status, sexual orientation, religious belief, age, disability, race, ethnicity or their membership of the Traveller community. We know these groups are subject to targeted harassment, discrimination and exclusion. Therefore, we feel it is imperative this is acknowledged in the Bill so that specific steps must be taken by the Garda to prevent harm to these individuals and their relevant communities.

Amendment No. 14 also relates to page 25. It is a simple amendment that seeks to replace the word “criminals” in respect of functions of An Garda Síochána with “individuals who have engaged in criminality”. The Minister and my colleagues will be aware of my concern regarding the use and misuse of language. Language matters and I do not think it is acceptable that the Bill would invoke the term “criminals” in respect of people who, for one reason or another, might have a criminal record. In my view, it dehumanises the person and makes permanent the fact that they at one time broke the law. Do we perceive someone who previous committed a crime or served a sentence but is meaningfully engaged in their rehabilitation and who is in full active membership or a participant in Irish life as a criminal or do we choose to hold empathy and understanding for them and see them for the persons they are and the dreams and aspirations that they may hold for themselves? I mentioned othering many times already but when we use a static word like “criminals”, it creates a subgroup of people. It almost implies that it is a characteristic. As much as someone is born with blond or red hair, you are a criminal. It is somehow a characteristic of your essence rather than being someone who has, was or is engaged in criminality. It allows them for a point in time to not be considered a criminal way in such a static way. It gives people a way back from being framed in a particular way and engaging in a particular activity that will cause any sense of unsafety to others within communities.

Amendment No. 16 seeks to provide An Garda Síochána with a function of facilitating restorative justice.Restorative justice is when dialogue is facilitated between a victim, the individual who has committed a crime against that person or their family and an independent person who is trained to prepare and manage these types of conversations. In the Irish context, the independent person can be a garda, a probation officer or a person who works within a community-based restorative justice programme. It is a powerful tool, but although there are some instances in Ireland of restorative justice being used, it definitely has not become as embedded in our practice as it could potentially be.

Youth workers are sometimes really good at engaging in restorative justice practices between young people in the community and people who may feel frightened of them. I refer here to groups of young people hanging around shops or instances of burglary. People might have a perception of safety versus real safety. Where someone has committed a crime, in order for there to be restoration, he or she has to engage in a practice of accountability and understand the impact the crime had on the person against whom it was committed. Victims must also be able to advocate for themselves in that moment in a very protected way, particularly in circumstances where they may have felt violated when the crime happened. Sometimes restorative justice can actually give the victim of a crime a moment where they can take some power back, engage and be able to bring the matter to a conclusion. It is not a case of their saying that what the other person did was okay, but it can add to the feeling of safety people have within their communities when they engage with the principles of restorative justice. This does not necessarily mean there is no accountability. There still must be accountability for crimes committed, but restorative justice can happen alongside that.

Amendment No. 17 proposes the deletion of the phrase "and improving road safety" from subsection (1). Amendment No. 18, which is related, also deals with road safety and would reinsert the phrase "improving road safety" by means of a new subsection (1)(j). These amendments have a shared intention and should be considered together. They aim to separate the objectives of regulating and controlling traffic and improving road safety, and to make it expressly clear that it is the function of An Garda Síochána to promote both concepts independent of each other.

The rationale for amendment No. 17 is to draw the distinction between traffic management and road safety. While traffic management impacts on safety on our roads, it is not exclusively responsible for promoting it. We have heard statistics recently about the reduction in the level of road traffic enforcement activity on the part of the Garda. The Minister of State with responsibility for road safety, Deputy Jack Chambers, advised that this risks undermining road safety in general. Garda detections of mobile phone use by drivers are down by 40% this year compared with 2019. The number of motorists stopped for speeding is down 30%. Arrests for drunk driving are down 14%. This is reflective of a shift in the focus of the Garda regarding road safety. It needs to be corrected as a matter of urgency. The number of people who have lost their lives on Irish roads to date in this year is 172. That compares with 142 deaths in the same period last year and it makes 2023 one of the most dangerous years on Irish roads in a decade. This is a hugely concerning trend that is not reflective necessarily of a marked shift in driver behaviour but, rather, lower levels of enforcement by gardaí. That is inexcusable. While amendment No. 17 cannot realign the focus within policing on its own, it can place a renewed focus on the duty of An Garda Síochána to improve road safety as a stand-alone function.