Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my fellow Cork people today. The other key thing is with regard to the composition of the new community safety partnerships. In our amendments Nos. 77 and 81, we set down that 25% of the membership of the CSP has to be with local authority members and then the chair has to come from a member of the local authority. Furthermore, it is a bit strange to us when we read section 114 that there is no mandatory attendance on the community safety partnerships by An Garda Síochána. Again, we seek that one fifth of the membership of the community safety partnerships would be from An Garda Síochána.

We heard what the Minister had to say with regard to the regulations. That does constitute some progress, but the question has to be asked here. If it is good enough for regulation, why is it not good enough to be hardwired into the legislation in terms of the composition and membership of the new community safety partnerships and, in particular, setting out that the leadership within the community safety partnerships should come from local authority members who are elected within their communities?

Senator Ruane spoke really eloquently earlier about those who are elected to represent their communities and that they should come from their communities. Again, this is about community safety. Therefore, we need some sort of guarantee that the person chairing the new partnership will come from the community and that it will not just be one of the members of the statutory agencies representing their organisations on the community safety partnerships. We in the Labour Party have a fundamental problem that the composition of the community safety partnerships is being relegated to a regulation, the timing of which we do not have clarity on.If it is good enough for regulation, why can we not see the detail now set out in writing and, indeed, have the assurances that when this legislation is commenced that it is there for all to see? In that way there can be ownership across the House. God knows we have had many hours of people talking about how great the JPCs used to be and how important it is that we have local authority members, yet it stops short of commitment to local authority members by not hardwiring it into the legislation. I believe there is a major gap.

With regard to the three pilots that were established, we were told they would be in place for two years before the roll-out throughout the country and that there would be learnings and lessons from the three pilots to inform the establishment of the local community safety partnership, LCSP. From the north inner city LCSP, which I know best, there are very real issues in regard to who attends those meetings. There was correspondence before Christmas about the fact there were very few councillors. All councillors in the north inner city are entitled to turn up but most of the councillors from the Government parties do not bother to turn up to the north inner city LCSP. In fact, it is mainly other councillors who bother to turn up.

It relates to resourcing. A fabulous report was published last August about all the things that need to happen in the north inner city. Not a single euro was put behind it. If we do not get the resourcing right, we will not be at the races in terms of the vision and potential of a LCSP.

On the point about leadership and who is going to drive the LCSP, I do not want to see it as a talking shop, which it could so easily become, particularly if statutory agencies sit around the table and it becomes a reporting mechanism. I do not have as much experience as Senator Fitzpatrick, but I sat on the Cabra-Glasnevin JPC and it is very useful. There are times, however, where there is frustration about bringing issues repeatedly and the question is: "Are they being acted upon?" It needs real leadership. That is why it is so important that we have a councillor being specified as the chair of the LCSP.

We urge the Minister to take these amendments on board. We heard what she had to say. We are not hopeful that she will take them on board but we believe that, in accordance with all the fine speeches that have been made on the need to have local authority members at the heart of the new LCSPs, our amendments are in line with that.