Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When discussing community safety, we instantly think of Garda numbers. It is well documented that the number of gardaí has declined while our population has increased. I acknowledge that there are recruitment drives to try to increase the number but we know that over 1,600 gardaí are due to retire in the next five years. Efforts have to be made to ensure they will be replaced, to address the issues making gardaí leave the force long before they reach retirement age, and to build up the number of gardaí and Garda capacity. Since the number of gardaí is insufficient, they are stretched too thinly. A friend of mine remarked recently that she had seen the squad car in her town. Usually, gardaí are not seen in the town. It is a large town, not just a village. The gardaí are moving around from town to town, just showing their faces, but that is not sufficient. We need to make sure there is a presence in every town and village.

When I was growing up, there was at least one garda, but usually two or three, in every village, and many more in each of the towns. Maybe that was just because Cavan is a Border town - I do not know - but all the gardaí knew everybody and everybody knew them. We need to get back to community policing. As many have said before me, it is not just about feet on the beat; it is about investing in our communities. After the economic downturn there were quite severe cuts to our community services, particularly our mental health, youth and addiction services, and these cuts have had a detrimental effect on many of our communities.

I taught in a DEIS school for many years. It was easy to identify the families who needed support because there is intergenerational poverty, intergenerational unemployment and addiction problems. If there were investment in those families and their communities, it would pay dividends in the end because it would prevent many individuals from ending up in our prisons.

I remember teaching history, or trying to teach it, to a group of second-year pupils, aged 13 or 14. I was talking to them about a programme that had been on the night before and said that, since it had been on so late, they would have been in bed and would not have seen it. One of the students asked me what time it had been on and I said 10.30 p.m. He said he had been out running around the street at that time. I asked him where his parents had been such that they had not ensured he was in bed and he said they had been in the pub. That young man is now dead. He died of a drug overdose. If former pupils are listening to me now, they will not know what former student I am talking about because several have lost their lives to accidental drug overdoses. Those are people who came from families in which there was intergenerational poverty and unemployment and who needed support. We need to invest in our communities and deprived areas so we can prevent crime. We are not going to prevent all crime but we can certainly prevent a certain amount of it.

I engaged recently with the National Youth Council of Ireland, which has said that the funding it gets is very restrictive. It does not get multi-annual funding so it is very hard for it to plan. There are some excellent projects but the council is limited in what it can do because it cannot expand its services. There is no funding for staff. We need to address that and ensure substantial funding is put into all community services, youth services, addiction services and mental health services.

Some Senators have called for an increase in the number of prison places. I remember engaging with the Prison Service when I was a member of the disability committee during the term of the last Dáil. There is a large number of people in our Prison Service who should not be there. I am not saying they have been wrongfully convicted or anything – they are in prison because they have committed crimes – but they may have mental health issues or be autistic. In many cases, they will have committed a crime and ended up in prison because they did not get the community support they required. Had they got it, it is quite possible that they would have gone on to live different lives. Therefore, we need to ensure the required community supports and services are made available to support people with mental health and addiction issues, particularly our youth.