Alison Comyn (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader and support the Order of Business he has proposed.

I will raise a couple of topics. We have a lovely bit of sunny weather but with that, unfortunately, came a rise in public order incidents in the Drogheda area over the weekend. I received a number of disturbing videos of serious public order incidents in daylight. We are talking about 2 p.m. This raises something I would like to debate with the Minister for Justice, namely, garda shortages in that particular area. Drogheda is the largest town in Ireland with approximately 50,000 people. In 2022, there were two sergeants and 14 gardaí. I got these figures from one of the senior gardaí yesterday. In 2025, we have one sergeant and five gardaí, which is not ample for the number of people.

Another area I will raise is Laytown Garda station, which is one of the feeder stations for Drogheda. It is a tiny bungalow in a small housing estate in a village in east Meath. It was promised eight gardaí a couple of years ago, but it has three gardaí and is a part-time Garda station. The then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, visited in 2022 with the Commissioner, Drew Harris, and they assured people this station would go into a ten-year Garda plan and a new location would be found for it, a search that is looking at a very wide area. There are 17,000 people in the Laytown area. These stations service Bettystown, Mornington, Stamullen and 50,000 people, so the garda numbers are not sufficient. One reason for some these public order incidents, according to local community and outreach workers I was speaking to over the weekend, is the lack of a HSE outreach worker. There is somebody who is out on leave. I spoke to representatives of a local drugs and addiction service, The Red Door Project, and they said €20,000 would cover the position for four months. That would make a huge difference, allowing people who are now at a loss out on the street to engage with an outreach worker. It would be great to see if funding is available along these lines. We have many security issues at the moment – they may fall under the Department of Justice or the Department of Health – so I would appreciate the opportunity for a debate on them. We are coming into the summer and they could escalate.