Nicole Ryan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see the Minister back again. Community safety is a fundamental right. Too often we discuss crime and safety with the focus placed on urban areas. There is no doubt the cities face serious crime issues but the conversation cannot ignore rural Ireland, where crime, harassment and fear are just as real and sometimes more so given the lack of Garda presence and resources. For example, in my constituency, the community of Charleville lives in absolute fear due to massive antisocial issues. There have been a spate of car break-ins in Macroom and Coachford where people are living in fear in their own homes and estates. When these crimes go unsolved and there is little to no Garda presence, it sends a message to criminals that they can get away without any consequences and our communities are left to fend for themselves.

It is not just property crime that affects our rural communities. It is sometimes something much more insidious. It is the everyday fear among so many people, especially women, who live with it. I personally know that fear. Growing up, my mother always said that it is not always the big cities, it can also be the local towns but when you are 18 you think you know it all. When I was 18 I was walking home from our local nightclub one night. The walk is ten minutes long in a well lit area and I walked it thousands of times since I was in primary school. On that night I was followed by a man and chased home.The only luck I had on my side was that I was faster than him. While I did get home safe and sound, it did not stop there because the fear was with me for weeks on end. For weeks, I had to ask my mother to drop me into town because I did not feel safe walking down, and I would make sure I was home before nightfall. A place where I grew up, and my home town, which was a safe place, as I always thought, became a source of anxiety for me. I look back on that incident and wonder why I did not report it. It was because I felt then that nobody would believe me. I feared my experiences would be dismissed, that I would be minimised and I would be asked if I was sure. Perhaps I was imaging things and maybe I overreacted.

The reality for many people in this country is the same. Their experiences of fear and danger are brushed aside because "nothing happened". However, something did happen. That fear stays with you. It changes how you move through the world and how you see things.

For those who do report the incidents, the system often fails them too. A woman in Newmarket was assaulted while walking in the woods, just going about her day. For every case like hers, there are countless cases where people are harassed, followed and threatened, but because they do not escalate to physical violence, it is not taken seriously.

In another incident, a friend and I were harassed by a man in Cork city. He had followed us from the city centre to Barrack Street. He was continuously trying to engage with us and we were not interested. From my past experiences and now being older, I was able to stand up to him and tell him I was not interested, and he backed away. However, because my friend was not vocal in that instance, he followed her instead. I stood there, watching her go off to her estate. He walked past me and ran after her. In that moment, all I could do was try to run after him. I probably would not have been able to overpower him but I did not want her to feel alone in that fear, the fear that I know well. When we tried to report it, it took three attempts for the issue to be acknowledged. Even then, because he had not physically attacked her, nothing could be done. What kind of message does this send, that you have to be attacked to be taken seriously, that women should have to accept harassment as part of their everyday life, that people in rural Ireland should just accept that stations are closing, and people have to live in fear and it is something they have to get used to? I refuse to accept that.

It is not just one incident, one case or one community. This is a systematic failure that has been years in the making. Garda numbers have fallen while the population has risen. Like other Senators have mentioned, 1,640 gardaí are eligible for retirement in the next five years yet the recruitment and training have not kept pace with demand. What do we need to do? We obviously need more gardaí, and I think everybody echoes that. We need investment in youth services and community resources because crime does not just happen in a vacuum. We need a justice system that actually listens to victims and understands that the fear and trauma are real, even if there are no bruises and broken bones to prove it. We need to stop treating safety as an afterthought. It should not take a high-profile crime or tragedy for action to be taken. This must change, and it must change now.