The purpose of our meeting is to discuss policing matters. A range of matters will be traversed. The discussion will cover three main topics: challenges relating to rostering and recruitment and recent industrial relations issues; the policing of Dublin city; and the policing of protests. Those are three quite distinct topics but I am sure there will be some overlap.

…………………………….. We need a zero-tolerance approach towards the public sale and consumption of illegal drugs. We also need to review the efficacy of the proliferation of drug treatment centres and in the future of medically supervised injection facilities in the city. A forum between the relevant bodies and local businesses should be created in any area where these facilities are provided.

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Deputy Pa Daly:  ………………………….

I hear what Mr. Gallagher says. When we met gardaí and business leaders during the summer in the north-inner city of Dublin, we heard the HSE closed a lot of drug clinics, for example, in Blanchardstown. They were all funnelled in. Vulnerable people, some ex-prisoners and people with drug issues were funnelled in to the city centre but we see that around the country as well. In my own town, Tralee, there are five or six hostels. When the town councils were abolished, they were all concentrated, it seems to me, in provincial towns as opposed to being spread out around the county.

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Deputy Niamh Smyth: I apologise for interrupting. Another important aspect of all of this are the drugs units within divisions across the country. Cavan-Monaghan has 12 gardaí allocated to that. My understanding is that between transfers, promotions and changes to rosters, that number is going to deplete. What impact are all these issues having on incredibly important units within An Garda Síochána locally, including the drugs units?

Mr. Brendan O'Connor:The drugs unit is like the community policing unit in that it was under threat if we had to move back to the five-unit shift pattern. We hope the immediate threat has been removed but, again, the problem is recruitment. We just do not have the personnel and those units are becoming more and more depleted. As Deputy Smyth said, there are fewer numbers in them. We see that across the country.

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Deputy Patrick Costello: …………………………………….

I find some of the submissions on the policing of Dublin city have a couple of omissions in them. There is a lot of talk about illegal drugs but there is no mention of alcohol, which is a much bigger contributor to crime and antisocial behaviour and to a lack of safety in Dublin city centre and yet that never seems to get mentioned at all.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin: ………………………………….

I agree with Deputy Costello about the other two presentations on social issues in Dublin. Alcohol was not mentioned. Are we to believe that the only drug taking in Dublin is done on the street? I am quite sure people are taking cocaine in restaurants, pubs and nightclubs and they are getting intoxicated with alcohol in those various hostelries or wherever. The cost to the Exchequer of alcohol consumption is approximately €3.8 billion per year.

On the RAI's suggestion of zero tolerance, we had that discussion for approximately 25 years. It is an old suggestion. I assume the difference between a drug taker in a restaurant and a drug taker on the street is that one is visibly poorer than the other and, therefore, less attractive to the eye than the other and one has less money to spend than the other and that is why we focus on the poorer person.

I also take issue with the association's opposition to the medically supervised injection facility. Everywhere in the world that has had an injecting facility it has been shown that drug litter goes down, street injection goes down, the visibility of drug taking goes down, which might not be of interest to the representatives of the restaurants association, but they say they are compassionate, and HIV infections and hepatitis C infection and overdoses go down. I would expect those who advocate for a safer place in which to do business would be the first to advocate for an injecting facility, which has been legislated for and is coming down the tracks.

I also agree with what Deputy Costello said about social housing. These are old arguments that do not stand up to any scrutiny. If witnesses are going to peddle old arguments at an Oireachtas committee, we will not get anywhere. The answer to these problems is not purely in policing; it is also in social cohesion, social justice, education, empowerment and so forth. The presentation about what young people do from flat complexes is an old stereotype at which people would correctly take offence.

That is my presentation. I am quite happy for people to disagree with me. My main points are about the nature of drug taking in the city centre, why we feel different responses to different types are drug taking are needed, what we can do about the number of resignations from An Garda Síochána and who should oversee an independent pay review body as it would deal with a lot of the issues we see in An Garda Síochána. The gardaí I talk to who work in my community feel undermanned, under-resourced and under-appreciated and say they would not join the force now. That is the most worrying thing. People who have done the job for 15 or 20 years would not join now. That is worrying for the future of policing.

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Mr. Adrian Cummins: …………………………….

On the drug treatment centre, I said they need to work with businesses. They are not at the moment. The new drug treatment centre in Dublin 8 is not working with the local businesses. I know that for a fact because our office is 50 m away. The objection to the drug treatment centre did not come from the business community. It came from the local school.

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