Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for discussing community safety with us. It is a request other Senators and I have made. The people who live, work and visit my community just want to feel safe. This is not an unreasonable expectation to have or an unreasonable request to make. I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment and Jim O'Callaghan on his.

Trying to improve community safety is something I have been engaged in for a number of decades. I am a founding director of one of the first community policing forums and when a local authority member, I served as chair of the Dublin central joint policing committee. Speaking as a resident of the capital and of Dublin Central, I, like most of the people living there, am quite sick and tired of our part of the city featuring in news headlines because of stabbings, murders, begging, drug dealing and aggressive antisocial behaviour. It is totally unacceptable to us. My constituency has a population of approximately 120,000, but every day the area's population expands to more than 500,000.We do not just have the challenges most communities would have with their indigenous populations, we have many multiples of that because we have so many people coming in and going out of the constituency daily. I commend the gardaí working in Dublin Central - in the Bridewell, Store Street, Fitzgibbon Street and Mountjoy Garda stations, and the new stations opened on O'Connell Street and in the port. Each and every one of the gardaí and all of the staff who work there do a tremendous job. They are engaged, committed and hardworking, and we appreciate their presence. They actively engage with community residents, schools, employers, businesses and all of the tourist attractions we have. No event that takes place in Croke Park, sometimes with 80,000 people attending, could take place without An Garda. The Mater Hospital, Rotunda Hospital and Temple Street are indebted to An Garda. Every one of us who lives in the city is indebted to it. I am glad the new Minister has made a top priority of delivering on the promise in the programme for Government to increase garda recruitment to 5,000. It is important that number is achieved. I would like, in his response, if he could outline to us how the increased recruitment will be achieved.

Gardaí alone cannot make the world safer. The Minister said at the outset that we need to be realistic and accept that crime will always be with us. It is not going to disappear no matter how good the Minister or the gardaí recruited are. I am a strong believer in the small-area policing model. The community policing model is one pioneered in the north inner city going back more than ten years. Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources it fell by the wayside. One of the opportunities we have with increased garda recruitment is to re-establish that community small-area policing model that some of the other Senators have mentioned. Where you have dedicated community gardaí who see the role of a community garda as a career role, you see the kind of investment and commitment needed to make our communities safer. That leads to more community engagement and more support for An Garda. I would be interested to hear what resources will be applied to the community safety partnerships. There have been three community safety partnerships running. One of them is in the north inner city, but I would appreciate if, in his response, the Minister would talk about how the community safety partnerships will be rolled out nationally. I know he indicated that he intends to sign the enacting instrument in March. It is important that those community safety partnerships have community representatives and local authority members. The elected councillors on the ground are elected by their local communities, so they should have a strong role. It is important that the local authority officials - the executive functions - buy into those community safety partnerships. If we have sufficient dedicated gardaí on the ground, they can work and engage with the local authority where there are estate management issues. They can work with youth services, schools and justice youth diversion programmes.

I have heard the bell and will stop talking. I wish the Minister well and look forward to his response.