The reason I have asked permission to raise this matter on the Adjournment is that I wish to outline to the Minister the frightful situation prevailing on the streets of Dublin today. As a public representative in a constituency covering a large portion of inner city Dublin I am well placed and qualified to bring to the notice of the Minister the concerns of my constituents, my own views on what is happening, why it is happening and what steps need to be taken to rectify the matter.
First, just as the reasons people get involved in crime and vandalism are complex so also are the steps required to remedy this problem. I am not a politician who demands instant change or solutions, rather am I asking the Minister to direct the Garda Síochána along a certain policing path radically different from the policing policies of today. Two small reports, given a column inch of space, appeared in The Irish Times today and it is important that we take note of them. The first states that two people were injured in incidents in Dublin's inner city last night and that a garda was brought to hospital with a head wound when 40 youths stoned and destroyed a Garda car after a youth was arrested on a street I will not name. It went on to state that the gardaí escaped from the riot with their prisoner. It further stated that on another street a youth was stabbed but not seriously hurt after two young men had attempted to rob him.
The second report, under the heading "Youth detained", stated that a 14-year old Dublin boy was given three years detention in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday for what Mr. Justice Roe called "a dreadful and unbelievable" attack on an elderly woman who was stabbed several times in the face after she remonstrated with a gang breaking into a parked car in another street in the north inner city.
It is a coincidence that these reports appeared on the day I have been given an opportunity to speak about crime and vandalism and policing methods in Dublin inner city but as a representative of the south inner city I do not ever want to have to come to the House to ask the Minister for Justice why things have been allowed to get so out of hand that there are newspaper reports of events, similar to those occurring in the north inner city, on the south side. There is no doubt what took place in the north inner city last night was bad. I hope we will learn of the reasons why such events occurred in the north inner city so that we can prevent such events occurring on a regular basis in the south inner city.
Inner cities have been written about all over the world. The population of the inner city of Dublin is rapidly declining with people being rehoused in the outer suburbs in both public and private housing, the reason being very little private housing is being constructed in the inner city. We have also witnessed a massive decline in traditional industries within the inner city and the demise of Dublin Port resulting in large numbers of people becoming unemployed.
The social fabric of the south inner city is mainly comprised of two working class communities. The first of these live mainly in huge impersonal inner city flat complexes, built in the thirties and forties. The others live in private housing estates consisting of small two or three bedroomed houses built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The crime being perpetrated is of a "petty" nature, such as house break-ins, handbag snatches, the stealing and subsequent burning of stolen cars and the sale of drugs. Unfortunately, there is severe vandalism of the private housing stock which is one of the issues I would like to highlight tonight. It is important to point out people do abandon their homes in an effort to escape an unfriendly environment and it is time someone recognised this fact and did something about it.
I invite the Minister to visit the following areas to see what I am talking about for himself, where almost every second house is for sale but for which there is no buyer, while the remainder are either boarded up or abandoned with steel bars on all the windows. I am sure the Minister would be moved to do something. For example, the Minister might visit Ruben Street, Haroldville Avenue in Rialto, Eugene Street or Fingal Street, off Donore Avenue. He might witness the wrecked artisan dwellings of Rialto Street. That is just to give a flavour of some of the streets of traditional working class cottages and private homes in my constituency which are under tremendous pressure. Not only are there the visual signs of the houses that have been wrecked and vandalised and the living reality of the type of environment that exists down there, there are the residents who have to stay put, unable to sell their houses because they are in "low demand" areas who feel threatened and abandoned. Can the Minister imagine the frustration, anger and fear of a resident in Maryland, a former local authority housing scheme which is now virtually privatised, who has had her home broken into, the windows broken and metal bars and catapults used to cause extensive damage to her roof? This woman is facing the real prospect of having to give up work altogether because of her fear that the house will be totally wrecked. It is an end of terrace house which tends to be most vulnerable. She cannot get a buyer for the house because the area is known for its vandalism.
Drugs are being sold openly at a road reservation at Weaver Street in the Coombe despite the fact that it is regularly reported to the Garda. My constituents can see the drug dealing that is going on, and so can I if I have the time to go up on a Friday between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Nothing changes for these residents who are looking at this, and they are getting very frustrated. Many people report crime to the Garda and more and more of them are becoming frustrated with the apparent lack of response. Visitors, staff and patients — pregnant women — are regularly mugged or have their handbags snatched at the Coombe Hospital in Cork Street. The residents see the unfortunate victims and wonder where are the Garda. Statistics will show that every Thursday and Friday night handbag snatches occur along the River Liffey at Usher's Quay. The victims are usually rural civil servants heading for the railway station and home and the young handbag snatchers escape through the flat complexes and streets in the area.
