Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 26 Jun 2024

I raise the case of a successful County Longford businesswoman who has endured an unrelenting nightmare since she underwent what was meant to be a root canal procedure in May 2019. It left her with permanent injury that will require treatment and medication for the rest of her life, but that is not the worst of it. The worst is the absolute failure of any regulatory body, in this case the obvious, clear and fundamental shortcomings of the Dental Council. I have debated whether to name the dentist at this juncture but have opted not to do so, pending sight of the Department's response. Suffice it to say the dentist in this case is County Longford based. My constituent has made it her personal mission to highlight the lack of governance and the patent lack of accountability in this sector. It was deeply disturbing for her to find out that the same dentist continues to be involved in several High Court and Circuit Court cases.

I did clarify earlier that I was not going to do so. The same dentist is involved in numerous High Court and Circuit Court cases relating to allegations of negligence in the provision of medical care. To date, my constituent and I are unaware of any actions or sanctions by the Dental Council against this dentist. In fact, a letter from the Dental Council of October 2023 clearly stated it cannot do anything to follow up on reports of professional negligence.

My constituent and many others are rightly and passionately pushing for reform of the Dentists Act 1985 and it is very much a commitment of the Government to follow through on this. While cognisance should be given to the views of the Irish Dental Association and the Dental Council, they should not fully inform any reforms. Rather, we should look to and take account of the experiences of my constituent and others like her.

I will paraphrase my constituent’s experience as follows. She contacted the Dental Council in August 2020 seeking its assistance in obtaining missing X-rays the dentist had failed to provide when first requested in November 2019. A letter from the Dental Council of November 2020 advised that it had tried informally to resolve the issue but to no avail, and that she could proceed with an allegation of professional misconduct against the dentist concerning his failure to release her records. It took that dentist 14 months to furnish some, but not all, of the X-rays. The dentist's notes for the patient are incomplete, prescribing three separate courses of antibiotics, and the patient says that by the time the third was administered, she was extremely ill. Had the dentist identified that there was a problem and referred the patient for appropriate treatment sooner, it would have minimised the damage and saved her a lot of pain and suffering. She subsequently took a civil case for medical negligence against the dentist, which was settled out of court in July 2023 for a substantial sum to cover damages, loss of earnings and future treatment.

Ever since then, the patient has valiantly tried to bring the matter to the attention of the Dental Council because she fervently believes it should be the duty of the council to take appropriate action and the necessary steps to safeguard patients. It is evident the Dental Council is not in a position to do this, as demonstrated by this case. Subsequent to her civil action, the council acknowledged it was satisfied to see her case settled and that the outcome, namely, substantial damages, seemed appropriate in this instance. It stressed, however, that the case could not be reopened because the matter had now been dealt with in the courts system and that, from the Dental Council's perspective, the matter is now closed.

It is a source of frustration, annoyance and concern that the council appears to be unable to fully and adequately regulate the profession in respect of fitness to practice and the protection of patients. My constituent feels the Dental Council is not able or willing to address these issues and, consequently, she reached out here in the hope the matter could be raised.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly. As the Deputy outlined, under section 38 of the Dentists Act 1985, the Dental Council or any person may apply to the fitness to practise committee of the Dental Council for an inquiry into the fitness of a registered dentist to practise dentistry on the grounds of alleged professional misconduct. Professional misconduct is defined as a serious falling-short in the standards expected of a dentist, and allegations of professional misconduct must be capable of being proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Where a registered dentist has been found by the fitness to practise committee, on the basis of an inquiry and a report under section 38 of the Act, to be guilty of professional misconduct, the council may decide the name of such a person should be erased from the register or from the register of dental specialists, as the case may be, or that for a period of specified duration, the registration of the name in the register concerned should not have effect. Alternatively, the Dental Council, under the fitness to practise provisions of the Dentists Act 1985, following an inquiry and a report by the fitness to practise committee under section 38 of the Act, may decide to attach such conditions as it sees fit to the retention in any register maintained under the Dentists Act of a person whose name has been entered into such a register and decide to advise, admonish or censure such a person in respect of professional misconduct.

Under the Dentists Act 1985, only dentists registered with the Dental Council can legally practise dentistry in Ireland. The use of forged documents, impersonation or other illegal methods to enable this practice are serious criminal offences as set out in the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. Persons found guilty of these offences are liable on conviction to up to ten years' imprisonment. In addition to this, any suspected cases of such activity should be reported to An Garda Síochána. Under the Dentists Act 1985, it is also an offence for a person who is not a registered dentist to use the title of "dentist" to practise dentistry or to represent themselves or hold themselves out as a dentist. These offences can be prosecuted by the Dental Council under the Dentists Act 1985.

The Dental Council, as a prescribed public body, may also rely on section 71 of the Consumer Protection Act 2007. This empowers the Dental Council to apply to the Circuit Court or the High Court for an order prohibiting any trader or person from committing or engaging in prohibited acts or practices.

This includes prohibiting dental practices from trading that may be facilitating illegal dentists on their premises.

More importantly, the Minister for Health is committed to the comprehensive reform of oral healthcare services, including legislative reform, as set out in the national oral health policy, Smile agus Sláinte. The protection of the public and ensuring high oral healthcare standards will continue to be the central focus of this work.

The Minister met the Dental Council on 15 January to discuss the regulatory powers available to it under the Dentists Act 1985 and the potential advancement of interim amendments. Since January, a series of thematic engagements between the Department of Health and the Dental Council to discuss legislative matters in more depth have taken place and any legislative changes will be subsequently a decision for the Oireachtas.

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I had hoped for a more robust response from the Department. Given its commitment to the comprehensive review and “reform of oral healthcare services, including legislative reform, as set out in the national oral health policy”, I would have expected the Department to be much more stringent in its terms and specifically set out areas of regulation that it wished to address. I note that the Minister for Health met the Dental Council on 15 January to discuss the regulatory powers available to it under the Act. One of the key requests made by my constituent was for the Minister and Department not to be totally reliant on input from the Dental Council and instead to be cognisant of and engage with the many patients who have been adversely affected to date. I ask that this message be taken back to the Department.

I wish to address a specific point in the response that, ironically, relates to the Minister of State’s Department. As a prescribed public body, the Dental Council may rely on section 72 of the Consumer Protection Act 2007, which empowers the Dental Council to apply to the Circuit Court or High Court for an order prohibiting any dentist or person from committing or engaging in prohibited acts or practices. I do not want to put the Minister of State on the spot, but does he know whether this section has ever been used by the Dental Council or is it just there for window dressing?

I would encourage the Deputy to provide the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, with the specific details of the case so that it can be followed through. The Minister is looking at reviewing and updating the legislation in the context of the wider implementation of the new national oral health policy, which envisages a fundamental reform of oral health services. Any new legislation will be informed by this work.

I have referred to the series of thematic engagements. These are important, as they will have an input into the regulatory reform programme the Department is developing. The Department welcomes positive engagement, not just from the Dental Council, but from all stakeholders – the public, the wider dental profession and public representatives – in this regard. The Minister is confident that, informed by this engagement, he will be able to deliver a robust, evidence-based and modern regulatory framework to support the new national oral health policy and the associated reforms.

I do not have to hand the details of the consumer side of matters, but I will get them for the Deputy and forward them to him.

I was stunned to read this week that the long-awaited and long-overdue national children’s hospital was set to be delayed further and that this supposedly state-of-the-art hospital may not even be accessible to wheelchair users. The Dáil was told in February that the project’s completion date would be this October and that the first patients could be expected to be treated there in spring 2025. It is now predicted that the hospital will not open to patients until 2026, which will be 12 years after the expected opening date.

Of significant concern is the report that a number of rooms within the hospital may not be accessible to wheelchair users. A number of doctors visited the site last year and were given a tour of the unfinished facility. At least two of six consultation rooms in one department were not wheelchair accessible. The doctors made clear at the time that they were extremely unhappy with this. They said that the rooms were very small and cramped and were akin to what they were using in the older hospitals.

We are constantly told that this is to be a modern and up-to-date building. At a cost of €2.6 billion, it has gone way over budget. It has been delayed 12 years. Now, it may not even be accessible. The project’s handling has been a disaster from the start. One has to ask who is responsible for the design. In this day and age, how could any professional stand over designing a building that is not accessible?

Ireland signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, in 2007, although it took us 11 years to ratify it and we were one of the last EU countries to do so. If we are going to behave like this, though, we should not have bothered. All public buildings should be fully accessible to ensure inclusivity for all persons. Buildings and services that are designed to meet the needs of disabled people serve the whole population well. We should not deny anyone access to anywhere. We hear of the ongoing court proceedings between the company responsible for the hospital’s construction and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board. The company consistently says that the volume and frequency of design changes are the reasons for the continued delays and cost increases. If elementary considerations such as ensuring accessibility are still being overlooked, I dread to think what the original design was like.

Have the rooms referred to by the doctors in the report been modified to ensure they are accessible to all and, if so, at what additional cost? How can we be sure that the building has been constructed to universal design standards? Are there procedures in place to ensure that something like this cannot happen again, not just at this hospital, but at any public building?

On behalf of the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, I thank Deputy Tully for raising this matter and giving me the opportunity to address the speculation about the lack of accessibility for wheelchair users at the new children’s hospital.

The hospital is the largest health capital project in the history of the State and will transform the delivery of paediatric healthcare in Ireland. The project consists of the construction of the main hospital on the St. James’s Hospital campus and two satellite facilities at Blanchardstown and Tallaght. Both satellite facilities are now open and delivering care. The new children’s hospital will be an incredible state-of-the-art hospital. It will be Ireland’s first digital public hospital, providing 473 beds in total, comprising 380 inpatient beds and 93 day beds. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board reports that the construction and equipping phase of the main hospital is approximately 90% complete against the contract value.

Regarding recent media reports, the development board has advised that the new children’s hospital has been designed, and is being constructed, in consultation with Children’s Health Ireland and in accordance with a disabled access certificate. There are more than 5,000 rooms in the new hospital and the development board has advised that all rooms and areas within the hospital are fully compliant and, as such, accessible. It appears that the comments attributed to an anonymous Dublin consultant are inaccurate or incorrectly attributed. The Minister for Health has been advised that neither the NPHDB nor CHI is aware of any reported complaint from a clinician or clinicians in respect of access. The Minister would encourage any clinician or other member of staff to engage with CHI or the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board directly to address specific concerns or misunderstandings that may exist in this regard.

The hospital’s design evolved out of extensive dialogue with many stakeholders, including staff from the three children’s hospitals, families, young people and children who were former or current users of the service. This process, which also fostered integration and the alignment of new ways of providing clinical care, has led to the development of a world-class building that is expressly designed for staff to deliver the best possible clinical care for children and young people.

With a project of this scale and such a large workforce moving into the new hospital, undoubtedly there will be reservations and differences of opinion raised by clinicians and other staff. However, significant consultation was undertaken to capture and address as many of those matters as possible at the point of design. The new hospital has been designed in line with international best practice to contemporary standards so as to reduce clinical risk and be as future-proof as possible, including by ensuring accessibility for staff, patients and their families.

If any clinician or other member of staff has an issue in this regard, we ask him or her to engage with CHI, the NPHDB or the Minister directly.

The need for this hospital has long been debated. There were delays in the initial stages about the location and it was decided that it should be in the middle of the city. I still question whether that was wise, but is too late to go back on that.

If there had been delays at the beginning to ensure the design was right everybody could have understood that. However, it seems that there has been change after change, which has caused delays and additional costs. This is taxpayers' money. While we need this state-of-the-art hospital, it was never predicted to cost as much as it has. It is one of the most expensive hospitals in the world. It should never have got to this stage.

There is also matter of the attitude towards building public facilities, services and so forth. I feel the UNCRPD is not being taken seriously across Departments. To ensure that any buildings, services or whatever else is being provided by a Department or public body is accessible to all, there needs to be engagement with disabled people. I am not sure that has happened in this case to the degree that it should have or that it is happening across the board in many projects.

There is a delay in the reporting cycle at the UN on our progress on the convention to date. It will be some time before we get feedback from it, which is a resource issue at UN level. We need to ensure that we are compliant with that convention and there is inclusivity and fairness. I hope the hospital is fully accessible. If there are any issues, I hope they have been addressed at this stage and that the project will proceed as quickly as possible. It is unfortunate that things like this are coming out at this stage. We need clarification and to ensure the hospital is accessible to all.

I thank the Deputy. I am happy to provide clarification. The Department has stated that the new national children's hospital has been designed and constructed in consultation with CHI and, most important, in accordance with disabled access certification.

There are 5,000 rooms in the new hospital and the development board is advised that all rooms and areas are fully compliant and, as such, are accessible. I again reiterate that if someone has evidence to the contrary, I ask them to please engage with the hospital development board, CHI or the Minister so that we can address the issue. The design process was informed by extensive workshops and consultation across all clinical disciplines. It is inevitable that there will be differences of opinion in a project such as this. The paediatric hospital development board is clear that the hospital is designed in line with international best practice to contemporary standards, to be as future proof as possible and to be accessible for staff and, most importantly, patients and their families.

I thank the Minister of State for taking this question. It is a follow-up question, as I have raised this issue previously. I point to the ambition to see every school student with a hot school meal, which has to be commended. I agree that we need to ensure that our children are given all of the support that is necessary to get them the best results and access to education. Equally, it is important that children get the same experience and feel they are the same as their peers. However, there are issues with the roll-out of the hot school meals programme. In County Clare, I have come across two schools which are worthy of the hot school meals programme, Ennistymon Community School and St. Anne's School in Ennis.

Ennistymon Community School is a newly amalgamated secondary school, where three different schools came together as one. It did not go through a smooth transition by any standards and has faced many challenges. One main challenge is that the amalgamation brought together one DEIS band school and two non-DEIS band schools. This resulted in hot school meals eligibility for just one school. I raised this with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and pointed out it would be unfair to roll out the scheme for only some of the more than 700 students. The Minister was quick to respond and rectify the matter, and ensured that all students in the school received a hot school meal for this school year. However, that does not resolve the matter in its entirety.

My understanding is that this September the hot school meals programme will only be approved for those students who attended the DEIS band secondary school and that will be in place until first-year students who started last year finish their secondary school cycle, after which the hot school meals eligibility will cease. I pointed out to the Minister that this was not a workable arrangement as it will see some students receive a hot school meal while most will not. I am concerned for all of the students involved. I remember my secondary school years. Students should all be treated the same. I do not want children to feel like they are different, and that is important.

With universal roll-outs, the Department still needs to be effective in how it responds to complex cases. This is a complex case. I note the Minister recently requested that the school engage with the Department and I have relayed that to it. However, this is a matter for the Ministers, Deputies Humphreys and Foley, to tackle together in order to ensure a fair path forward.

The second complex case is St. Anne's School in Ennis, a special needs school. The school has a cook who knows all of the children and their dietary needs. The cook ensures that each meal prepared for each child is tailored to their needs and wants, which makes sense and benefits everyone involved. Children get the food they want and unnecessary waste is combated. It provides the best value-for-money for the Department. The school wants to keep its arrangement in place. If I was part of that school community I would too.

Accommodation can and should be made to ensure that the most practical option is provided for each individual school, in particular special schools. The hot school meals programme does not allow a school to pay the wages of the cook, but if a school went with a company to provide the service it would cover all charges, from packaging to waste disposal to the delivery of the meals. However, the hot school meals programme does not currently recognise that special schools should receive accommodations. I request that the Minister, along with officials, re-examine the programme. By all means extend it, but they should take the time to appreciate that some schools will need additional support and flexibility.

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The objective of the school meals programme is to provide regular nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policy to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. Following a significant expansion in recent years, some 2,600 schools, covering 443,000 children, are now eligible for funding for a range of meal options under the school meals programme. The hot school meals programme started in 2019, with a pilot scheme of 30 schools, and has now grown to include 2,000 schools. It is my ambition and that of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, that every child born today will have a hot school meal by the time they start primary school.

St. Anne's School in Ennis, County Clare, has received funding under the school meals programme since the 2016-17 school year and has been funded for hot school meals since the 2023-24 school year. The school is currently in receipt of funding of €82,000 for hot school meals in respect of 143 children, at the daily rate of €3.20 per child per day. Funding under this programme is solely for food and is made available on the basis of a set price per meal per child per day. It is not possible for the funding to be used to recruit a cook or for the school to negotiate other arrangements locally. All schools which wish to avail of funding are responsible for choosing their school meals supplier on the open market in a fair and transparent manner, in accordance with public procurement rules, and the primary relationship is between the school and supplier.

Responsibility for sourcing the meals is a matter for each school, but in order to secure funding they must first agree to apply the standards set out by signing a service level agreement which clearly sets out the school's responsibilities and obligations in terms of nutrition standards for school meals which were developed by a working group, led by the health and well-being programme in the Department of Health, in consultation with Safefood and the healthy eating and active living programme in the HSE.

It is each school's responsibility to source a supplier that can meet the dietary requirements of all their pupils. Each school is required to provide a menu choice of at least two different meals per day and, where required, provide a vegetarian or vegan option and an option that caters for students' religious and cultural dietary requirements and medical conditions. The food provided for those with allergies or conditions must comply with these standards. Guidance on allergies such as coeliac disease and gluten intolerance is available from Safefood.

The hot school meals programme is specifically designed to cater for the dietary needs of children and the Department provides funding directly to schools, which are then required to procure the provision of the food in compliance with public procurement rules, the relevant hazard analysis, critical control point food safety regulations and nutrition standards for school meals.

The Minister and I are keen to build on the great success of the scheme to date. Those primary schools that have not opted into the scheme have been contacted again and many are now coming on board. This is a very positive step and I hope we can continue to build on the scheme in the years ahead.

The question, as framed by the Deputy, just referred to St. Anne's special school. As a result, I do not have any additional information Ennistymon. I am aware that the Minister and the Department showed flexibility last year regarding the situation in Ennistymon. Without knowing more of the detail and background, all I can say is that I will take the Deputy's request directly to the Minister. I can follow up a bit more in my supplementary reply.

I appreciate that the Minister of State will take that information back in respect of St. Anne's and the flexibility for special schools I am looking for. The response that has been provided is rigid and somewhat disappointing. Again, it is a one-size-fits-all approach that will not be workable in some schools, especially rural schools which do not have the options or opportunities that schools in urban areas may have.

I want to see each child in both of the schools that I raised thriving, getting the best and equal opportunity to education. The staff and the principal, Rose-Marie, in St. Anne's do fantastic work and they are doing all that they can. They have been finding the funding to pay this cook to keep her in place. This is vital for the children and our focus should be on them.

We also had a briefing from the principals of primary schools last week. They said they were at breaking point and crisis levels of hardship. They are losing principals as they are drowning in chaos with having to be a jack of all trades. They have difficulties with losing grants, increased costs and SET allocation hours. One principal gave an example of a contract for the hot school meals programme costing €160,000, which is more than the school received for all the other costs it is covering. One school conducted a survey and found that there was no desire within the school community for hot school meals. While that surprised me, the point made was that they are firefighting every day and that they need solutions to their existing problems and bills. They need these matters addressed first in some cases. Those particular schools believe that the funding is not being allocated in the right places.

I urge the Minister to sit down with the Minister for Education to ensure that an holistic view is taken and that flexibility is provided under the hot school meals programme to allow the Department to respond to the needs of those schools, especially in complex cases. There is a job of work to be done where it has already been rolled out. We do not want children in one school setting treated in any way differently from their peers. We also do not want to continue to see a special school using its funding mechanisms to self-fund their cook, leaving their children without the vital and important therapy they need. This has to be resolved, and I have made the Minister aware of these cases.

I take the opportunity to acknowledge the child-centred approach of St. Anne's special school. I read up about the school in advance, and it is to be commended on how it does things and works with children. I could read out all the statistics outlining the scale of the hot school meals programme. It is very large-scale programme and we want to cover all schools eventually. The nature of that means that it works in a particular way. It does not fund the staff and if we were to get into that realm, it would become a very different thing and would become more complex. At its core, is a very different policy direction from what the Deputy is proposing.

We provide funding to schools around the country to go to the market and get suppliers to bring food in. In many ways, that has developed because of how schools are set up in Ireland as opposed to the setup in other countries. Our schools tend not to have kitchens or cooking facilities. In order to reach as many people as possible, the hot school meals programme has developed in the way that it has. In many respects, it has been quite effective. As the Deputy acknowledged and as I mentioned, there is flexibility within that model. We have facilitated Ennistymon within the overall model. The Deputy is talking about a very different model, which would not have allowed us to reach as many schools, had we done it that way.

Notwithstanding that, what St. Anne's wants to do is commendable. As to how that might be pursued, I am not so sure. I know from my work in the Department of Rural and Community Development that it funds staff through the community services programme, through community organisations which are involved in the provision of meals to communities - I am not so sure about schools. Certainly, in community settings, that happens. I am not saying that is doable here but perhaps there is another way of facilitating what they want to do, which is ultimately the best for the children as well. I am open to ideas and a discussion on how that might be done. However, I cannot see how the model we have in the Department can fit what the Deputy is proposing, at least in this school year. It would require a significant change in policy direction to facilitate that.

This is my fifth, potentially sixth, time having a Topical issue during this Dáil year on the matter of crime in and around the constituency of Dublin Central. On none of those occasions has a Minister with responsibility for justice been here. While I appreciate that cannot always be the case, I would have expected that it would have happened on at least one of those occasions.

I frequently raise the issue of antisocial behaviour in my own area in Dublin Central not because I want to talk the area down, not because I do not have pride in the area, and not because I do not see all the other wonderful aspects of the community that I live in and am proud to represent, but because very frequently there is an issue of antisocial behaviour. Such is the nature of the city centre in most capital cities. Whenever I am canvassing, knocking on doors and going to public meetings, as an opposition TD, I am consistently asked what I am doing to combat antisocial behaviour in the city centre. I am massively frustrated that consistently I have to come into the Dáil, raise an issue, receive a written response but then not see any follow-up action. In opposition I do not have allocation of budget or responsibility for policy.

There is huge frustration because throughout the central parts of Dublin - I am sure the southside is the same - we do not feel we have the right level of Garda response time when it comes to issues of criminality. I raise Dublin 7 specifically today because previously I have mentioned other parts of the constituency. Dublin 7 is an old and incredibly beautiful part of Dublin with a huge amount of history. Someone driving down Dorset Street towards Bolton Street, the gateway into the city for anybody coming from the airport, will see huge levels of dereliction that would not be tolerated anywhere else. Down any one of the lanes in the area, you can see drug dealing taking place openly, as well as poor human souls with a degree of chaos in their lives who are not receiving treatment from the State and are dealing with their trauma by self-medicating. We have been facilitating that for far too long.

In one of the great assets of the city, one of its great unknown gems, the Blessington Basin, known locally as the duck pond, once again you will see open drug dealing, antisocial behaviour and scrambler bikes coming through very frequently. The residents and business people in the area frequently send me videos of people fighting and people in various stages of intoxication. However, what they do not see with any degree of frequency is a Garda presence, which is massively frustrating.

I took a walk along Manor Place just off Stoneybatter last week and I know a number of business representatives from the area, including Ray from Slice who makes an incredible contribution to that community. Their frustrations are the exact same. They try to run their businesses and try to present the best vision they can for their customers and the people who live in the area. Too often, there is antisocial behaviour. That antisocial behaviour often begins with a form of dereliction that is allowed to occur by inaction by another part of the State, Dublin City Council, not providing rental or cleaning services, other buildings in states of decay, bins left out etc. Once those factors are present in an area, inevitably it brings in antisocial behaviour.

Once again, I am bringing to the attention of a representative of the Government that my community in Dublin Central is not happy with the standard of service we are receiving from the State when it comes to the enforcement of the law or the minimum expectations that other communities in the State would have. Too often, there is open drug dealing, open intoxication of people who themselves need assistance, or antisocial behaviour that inevitably seems to take the form of scrambler bikes with very little Garda presence. This is not a criticism of the Garda; we need more gardaí and the Garda needs to be supported by the State.

I thank Deputy Gannon for raising this issue and I will bring his description directly to the attention of the Minister, Deputy McEntee.

It is important, as we all agree, that people feel safe and are safe in their local communities, and Dublin 7 is no exception. Community safety is not solely the responsibility of the Department of Justice or An Garda Síochána. Rather, it is a whole-of-government responsibility. On behalf of the Minister, I will outline the all-of-government approach to community safety but I will speak first to the role An Garda Síochána plays and how the Government supports it.

The Government is committed to taking action to tackle crime across our country. This includes: giving An Garda Síochána the tools and technology to fight crime in a digital era by rolling out improved CCTV and body-worn cameras, the pilot scheme for which launched on 30 May; doubling the maximum sentence for assault causing harm to ten years; and, most importantly, giving local people and local representatives a real say in how to make their communities safer through the new community safety partnerships. I am assured that the distribution of gardaí is kept under review by the Garda authorities in light of any emerging crime trends or policing needs.

An Garda Síochána maintains a proactive approach to policing the city centre in order to reduce crime and keep people safe. Members of the Garda mounted unit, dog unit, armed support unit and Dublin metropolitan region roads policing unit support Operation Citizen by way of high-visibility beats and mobile patrols, particularly at weekends and in support of organised events. However, I will draw the Minister’s attention to the Deputy’s remarks regarding the lack of visibility in Dublin 7. The Garda national public order unit is also available to support regular units and has recently been issued with larger incapacitant sprays, as well as smaller public order shields.

In addition, Operation Limmat is the Dublin metropolitan region’s public order reduction strategy. Operation Limmat promotes a pro-arrest and early-investigation approach to incidents of assault, together with driving high-visibility policing in public places to act as a deterrent to prevent and reduce assaults and public order offences in the region. Operation Irene has also commenced in the Dublin metropolitan region and runs from 1 June to 1 September 2024. This is a multiagency operation with the key objective to prevent and detect antisocial behaviour, combat underage alcohol consumption and the consumption of alcohol in public space through the enforcement of legislation regulating the sale, supply and consumption of alcohol. The aim of the operation is to enhance community safety and confidence.

Again, I reiterate that from the description the Deputy has given, it does not seem that many of these are in action on the ground. I will forward his remarks directly to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, and ask them to engage with him to make sure this is actually happening on the ground.

I thank the Minister of State for that comprehensive response. I do not doubt for a second that no one has a monopoly of care for the city or that everyone wants to see it policed effectively. Nonetheless, too often we hear about initiatives such the ones laid out by the Minister of State that have a displacement effect. Very purposely, I chose Dublin 7 with that in mind. Greater attention has rightfully been given to the city centre. While I question how effective that has been, there has been a bigger Garda presence in the more commercial city centre areas. At the same time, that has created a displacement effect where, because it is not in the city centre, the activity has inevitably been pushed into surrounding communal areas, so it starts in the residential areas of Dublin 1 but then moves to Dublin 7. It almost has to be facilitated there because these problems are not going to go away simply with Garda intervention alone.

What we have had for over four decades is a merry-go-round of the State seeing a problem in particular areas, such as what has been happening in the city centre with the Taoiseach's new task force and the greater emphasis there, but this simply pushes antisocial behaviour into residential areas. That is a massive frustration for those of us who have to come to the House to highlight particular areas, knowing we are just going to push problems around in a carousel-like manner.

What I ask from the Government and the State is to deliver on the minimum expectations of a citizen who wishes to live or work in a particular community. We would all accept that nobody should have to walk their child to school through a plume of smoke. Nobody should have to open their door and see a person who can be intimidating engaging in the sale of drugs, or some unfortunate soul who has succumbed to that lying on the ground. There are a multitude of different interventions that could happen. Very simply, the people I represent understand that these issues are complex and they have lived with them for decades. What they cannot understand is how the same issues keep repeating over and over again ad infinitum. It is about the minimum expectations of a citizen. I would like to see an increased Garda presence, a greater number of detoxification beds for those who need them and greater enforcement around schools and playgrounds.

I agree with the Deputy that it has to be a multiagency approach. There is a new approach to community safety policy via the local community safety partnerships, which are being piloted in three locations, including in the north inner city of Dublin. They bring together the local communities and local service providers under an independent chair to develop a specific community safety plan for that local area and, more importantly, to work in partnership. The Dublin north inner city partnership continues to work collaboratively with key stakeholder agencies to address matters as they arise. It has four proactive subgroups which are focused on specific themes impacting the community. The establishment of the Department of Justice community safety innovation fund is reinvesting funds that are seized as proceeds of crime back into the communities. The funding increased from €2 million in 2022 to €3 million last year and increased again to €3.75 million in budget 2024.

As the Deputy has acknowledged, a task force was created to make Dublin city centre a more thriving, attractive and safe cityscape. On 9 May, the Taoiseach gave priority to this high-level task force. Again, I will bring the Deputy’s opening remarks directly to the attention of the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and also his concerns around displacement.