Mary Lou McDonald
Question:1. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the north-east inner city oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [49703/22]
View answerWednesday, 26 October 2022
Questions (1, 2)
Ivana Bacik
Question:2. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the north-east inner city oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [53392/22]
View answerOral answers (21 contributions)
I propose to take questions Nos. 1 and 2, inclusive, together.
The north-east inner-city, NEIC, programme implementation board, chaired by an independent chairperson, meets on a monthly basis to oversee and progress the implementation of the Mulvey report and the next strategic plan 2020-2022. Members of the board include representatives from relevant Government Departments and agencies, businesses and the local community. The chair of the board reports to an oversight group, chaired by the Secretary General of my Department, whose membership comprises senior civil servants across Departments and agencies who are actively engaged with the work of the NEIC initiative.
This group ensures strong and active participation by all relevant Departments and Government agencies and deals with any barriers or issues highlighted by the board. The oversight group does not meet to a set schedule but is convened at the request of the Secretary General of my Department on an ad hoc basis to discuss and resolve challenges that arise through the work of the NEIC programme implementation board.
The group most recently met on 30 September, where discussions included the work being progressed by the NEIC programme implementation board under the areas of policing; educational, training and employment opportunities; family well-being, community well-being and the physical environment; substance use, misuse and inclusion health; and alignment of services. The agenda and discussion points of these meetings remain flexible to make sure each meeting is as dynamic as possible and produces the most effective results for Government Departments and agencies, community groups, stakeholders and the people of the north-east inner city of Dublin.
Both Deputy McDonald and I have raised the north inner-city drug and alcohol task force on multiple occasions with the Taoiseach over the past year and a half. Progress has been glacial, even by the Department of Health's standards. As a result, the task force in effect remains shut down. This represents a wider shift away from evidence-based community addiction responses. Fine Gael decimated task forces in the austerity years and they have never seen their funding returned. Inadequate co-funding has removed autonomy from task forces.
The Taoiseach knows addiction is complicated, trends move quickly and local responses are needed. Will the Taoiseach meet with the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, to discuss how to support task forces, in particular the north inner-city drug and alcohol task force, and bring back their autonomy?
The "Prime Time" programme on O'Connell Street highlighted again the many problems impacting on our city centre. It is not only a feature of the north-east inner city but also in my own constituency where residents in the south inner city have raised with me many concerns around crime and anti-social behaviour in their areas. Clearly this is a multifaceted problem requiring a multi-agency approach. Key to it is the presence of more visible community policing on the streets and I have raised that with local police and urge that that be a major element but there are other ways by which these issues can be addressed. Recently, my colleague Deputy Ó Riordáin and I met with Merchants Quay Ireland and heard its real concern at the delay in the introduction of supervised injecting facilities on its premises which is one way of addressing serious problems around open drug use on city streets which creates its own difficulties for local residents but very seriously it is also a health and safety issue for those injecting on the streets. A change in the law was secured by Deputy Ó Riordáin in 2015 to deliver supervised injecting facilities in the city centre but the plan has run into difficulty since. There is a real lack of urgency from this Government in pursuing and making progress on this. It is something that was agreed some years ago and which could be rolled out even on a mobile basis. Will the Government commit to the roll-out of other regional self injecting facility centres? Will it commit to addressing the serious concerns of inner city residents around the lack of visible community policing also?
There has been a lot of criticism about the state of O'Connell Street. It is a complex problem but it is mostly emblematic of a failure of Government policy on multiple fronts. I want to make a very simple point when people give out about activities that are going on on O'Connell Street. There used to be three supervised public toilets in the O'Connell Street vicinity. Now there is none. Particularly for people who are homeless, as a result of another failure of the State, there is nowhere to go to the bathroom. It is a basic thing. During Covid we managed to introduce supervised public toilets throughout the city. As soon as Covid was gone they were taken away. That is not just true in O'Connell Street but it is true in my area and many other areas. We showed we could have supervised public toilets and it was good and beneficial, but we removed them immediately. Many of the public toilets near O'Connell Street are still there. They are just gated up because we do not put the resources into providing them. That is a basic elementary thing that we could do as well as the supervised injection centres.
There are solutions that could make an immediate impact. Rather than demonising people or somehow giving the idea that O'Connell Street is a no-go area there are basic things that could be done by the local authority and the Government that would make a significant impact as well as improving the lot of people on O'Connell Street.
First, I am taken aback by Deputy Gould's comments. The north-east inner city initiative has not been going at a glacial pace. It has been very effective. I think that is widely acknowledged. I was recently at the restoration of Fitzgibbon Street Garda station and saw the community room in the station. There has been tremendous focus in the north-east inner city initiative. This year, €7.5 million will be allocated to it. He did make points on the broader issue around task forces more generally. Yesterday, at the Cabinet meeting on social affairs, I was pursuing an initiative with the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, that we would endeavour to reinvigorate local area partnerships and responses to create proper co-ordination but also an approach from the bottom up that would use and leverage from existing agencies, from Tusla to ETBs and the health service, to ensure that we can deal with addiction issues on the ground in many communities across the city and the country. We are progressing that proposal. We are making progress on that. Some significant work has been done in my Department on this initiative. An assistant secretary is overseeing and co-ordinating across all Departments an initiative and endeavouring to identify the 11 or 12 key areas of the country that need sustained, high-level attention on multiple issues including addiction and community development, education, school completion and many others. We are pursuing that broader issue.
The north-east inner city initiative does give us an interesting model of what works. For example, there was an external chair who was not involved in any particular stakeholder group who chaired that initiative. That has worked well. There have been significant initiatives coming out of it in investment and physical infrastructure, community facilities and so on.
On the broader issue which Deputy Bacik raised, I am willing to engage with her and Deputy Ó Riordáin on the injection facilities. My understanding was that there was opposition to planning and issues around planning.
Yes.
It is not that the Government is dragging its feet on that.
It is both, I think.
Well, no. If a planning application goes in and it is refused by the independent planning authorities then I do not think that we can blame the Government for that. In any event, I would be interested in consultations or engagement as to how we can progress a facility like that and in learning lessons about why it has not happened to date and the obstacles that it faced in planning and the issues around all of that.
On the broader issue of O'Connell Street and anti-social behaviour more generally, the budget has allocated further funding to An Garda Síochána to support high visibility policing and tackle crime and anti-social behaviour and an additional €2.5 million for youth justice measures bringing the total investment to €24 million. The Minister for Justice and the Minister of State with responsibility for law reform met with the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, and the assistant commissioner, Angela Willis, from the Dublin Metropolitan Region to discuss safety and anti-social behaviour in Dublin and other areas following public concern over a number of incidents. The Minister asked the Commissioner to review the operation of anti-social behaviour legislation and procedures. She also asked the Commissioner about improving the use of anti-social behaviour orders, ASBOs, including the disparity in the use of ASBOs in different areas of the country.
In line with the programme for Government commitment, the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, established an expert forum on anti-social behaviour in 2020. This forum will examine the effectiveness of existing legislation and propose new ways forward including new powers for An Garda Síochána and additional interventions to support parenting of offenders. The forum is examining a broad range of issues with a focus on developing measures which will counter the negative impact on community morale and quality of life. There are two subgroups considering knife crime and the misuse of scramblers and quad bikes specifically. Other subgroups may be established. That is more detail on the medium-term response to some of the issues that were raised.
On O’Connell Street, I repeat what I said last week. I do think that we need to get on with the physical refurbishment of O’Connell Street. My own experience, having been on city councils in the past, is that streets can be transformed with investment in their streetscape. For a long time, with O’Connell Street and in and around Moore Street and the GPO, there has been exhaustive discussion among parties and political parties at local and national level, Deputy Ó Cuív was involved, trying to reconcile the various interests around the heritage site and so on. Eventually agreement was reached. There is not full unanimity on it and there are objections and so on. Until we get that transformed we will still be in trouble in relation to O’Connell Street. We live in a democracy and people are entitled to have perspectives but it is not enough just to say "that's wrong; that's wrong; that's wrong". We need to fix it. There are multiple ways to fix it.
A few supervised public toilets would be good, though.
There are issues around that too, and the Deputy knows that.
Not if they are supervised.
Would you support - through the Chair -----
I would not be asking open-ended questions.
I know we cannot do that. Apologies. But would the Deputy support the redevelopment of O'Connell Street as proposed by Hammerson?
Not Hammerson.
Well then we go another ten years for something else to come along. That is the problem.
That is not the problem.
We need to be honest with ourselves. We keep saying this must happen and that must happen but when someone comes forward with a proposal and it goes on for ten years trying to get agreement from everybody and we get an outcome and then we start opposing-----
Something needs to be done. Here is something: let us do that.
No, sorry. This has been long considered in great detail by everybody. Not me; I am not involved.
I do get impatient at our complaining about everything for decades and not reaching a compromise to get something done to transform streetscapes and bring about an improvement. Improvements have been made in other parts of the country to good effect. We have transformed towns and cities across the country and this has had a huge impact in tackling dereliction and behaviour that follows it.