Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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131. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the work to date in the three pilot community safety areas; the indicators that are being used to establish the success of the approach; if there are early findings; and when the lessons and approaches introduced will be seen more widely. [8538/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, in April 2021 I secured government agreement to publish the general scheme of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill.

The Bill will provide for a key principle from the report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, namely that preventing crime and harm and making our communities safer does not rest with An Garda Síochána and my Department alone. Rather, it will be best achieved as a whole-of-government responsibility, with Departments and agencies responsible for health and social services, education authorities and local authorities, the Gardaí and the wider community working together.

The new Bill will achieve this by establishing innovative Local Community Safety Partnerships (LCSPs) to develop local safety plans, tailored to the priorities and needs identified by communities themselves. The LCSPs will replace and build upon the existing Joint Policing Committees and will provide a forum for State agencies and local community representatives to work together to act on community concerns.

Each Partnership will devise and oversee a Local Community Safety Plan, which will be informed by the community itself. Membership of the Partnerships will be broader than that of the existing JPCs and will include residents, community representatives (including youth, new communities and voluntary sector representation), business and education sector representation, relevant public services including the HSE, Tusla, An Garda Síochána, and local authorities as well as local councillors.

The Deputy will be aware that in November 2020, I announced the establishment of three Local Community Safety Partnerships on a pilot basis in the north inner city of Dublin, Waterford and Longford. The locations of the pilots, which will run for 24 months, were chosen based on a number of factors including population density, crime rates and deprivation. An independent Chairperson has been appointed to chair each Partnership pilot and I am deeply grateful to them for their public service.

As the pilots progress, they will be carefully evaluated and any necessary changes made to ensure the Partnerships work as effectively as possible for the communities involved. The pilots will inform the further development of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill, which will facilitate the rollout of Local Community Safety Partnerships in every local authority area.

The role of the LCSPs seeks to build on the good work done by Joint Policing Committee, but through an evolution and expansion of that structure. The LCSP will bring a broader focus to community safety issues, of which policing is but one factor, to enable communities to be safe and feel safe. 

The three LCSP pilots are each embedding in their local community structures, convening monthly partnership meetings and progressing work on their community safety plans, which are being informed by the community itself in collaboration with all partnership stakeholders.

Each pilot area, in line with the commitments given by me at the outset, is already participating in a robust evaluation process which will last for the 24 month duration of the pilot.

The overall aim of the evaluation is to provide actionable evidence to help inform the development of the LCSPs and their rollout across the country on completion of the pilot period, when the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill is enacted.

The evaluation is exploring implementation approaches and processes that appear to be effective across and within the pilot communities. It will, over time, assess how well the Local Community Safety Partnership pilots identified the priorities and concerns of their communities; how the LCSPs conducted their work; the engagement and relationships the LCSPs had with the local communities; and the impact of the LCSP work on community safety.

The evaluation of the LCSP pilots uses a mixed-methods approach, combining individual, semi-structured interviews; focus groups; observation methods; and surveys. Data is being collected across three time-points – at the beginning of the pilots, after 12 months implementation and at the end of the pilot phase.

Findings from the evaluation process will inform future rollout of the LCSP model and future national community safety policy.