Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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21. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if he will outline the preparatory work being done for the roll-out of community safety plans beyond the pilot areas; if new sources of funding, beyond the proceeds of crime, will be needed to fund initiatives under these plans; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25190/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Community safety is not just about the number of Gardaí in communities. Community safety is a whole of Government responsibility and it requires a multi-agency approach.

The Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill will place statutory obligations on Departments and other public service bodies to cooperate with each other to improve community safety. It also establishes national structures to provide strategic direction and ensure that collaboration is working, and establishes Local Community Safety Partnerships (LCSPs) which will replace existing Joint Policing Committees.

There are currently three pilot LCSPs in Dublin’s North Inner City, Waterford, and Longford. The partnerships are made up of

• Community representatives, including residents, youth representatives, members of new and minority communities, local activists, local businesses, and representatives of schools;
• Public sector representatives, i.e., local statutory services such as the HSE, Tusla, An Garda Síochána, and the local authority; and
• local councillors.

Each partnership will create their own local community safety plan, setting out the key actions to address safety concerns in their community and assigning ownership for these actions. The first such plan has been produced by the Longford LCSP pilot and is available on the Longford County Council website. I was pleased to launch the Waterford Community Safety Plan 2023-2028 in March.

The pilot LCSPs are undergoing an ongoing independent evaluation to ensure that, when established nationally, the LCSPs will be designed and supported to help communities prioritise issues raised by its members as safety concerns.

The mid-term evaluation was received by my Department in April 2023. Ultimately the report finds its results are consistent with learnings from elsewhere, and that they reaffirm the importance of the partnerships’ work.

It concludes by emphasising that the current crucial components, at the national level, are vision, leadership and the setting up of the national structures and processes for implementation of the rollout.

A final evaluation report of the LCSP pilot is expected by the end of 2023, ahead of their nationwide rollout as part of the implementation of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill.

The Community Safety Innovation Fund, which is aimed at ensuring that money seized as the proceeds of crime is reinvested in communities, was launched last year, providing €2 million in funding to innovative community safety projects.

The funding has been increased to €3 million for 2023, with the call for applications to the 2023 fund closing last Friday. I look forward to seeing the projects that will emerge from this new round of funding.

The three pilots have also received a small level of funding from the Dormant Accounts Fund to date and the national rollout will require funding of a similar magnitude.