Darndale Park playground was vandalised in May and closed, needing repair, by Dublin City Council. Eco toilets were installed recently in St. Anne's Park and a week, later, on 26 October, they were set on fire. Kilmore playground was lobbied and campaigned for by the local community for years. The city council went through a big process to put the facility in, and rightly so. Last Sunday, there was an arson attack on the playground. I went there the day after the attack. The Minister of State can see how it looks now from the picture I have in my hand. The city council had to close it because it is not safe for use. That is a playground gone. The next picture shows Howth community garden, off Tuckett's Lane at the back of Scoil Mhuire. Three days ago, an eating area was torched and vandalised and is now unusable for the community. A playground at Diamond Park in the north inner city, just off Gardiner Street, was vandalised in July and again on Hallowe'en night. There was a big fire in Sean Moore Park, near Poolbeg, in September. Bridgefoot Street Park in The Liberties was vandalised in October. There is too much of this going on. Communities cannot wear this as a strategy. It has been raised at local level and I am raising it here because I want to know whether there is a pattern to it. There have been an awful lot of incidents across the city. The Lord Mayor, Ray McAdam, has raised this with An Garda Síochána. I raise the issue here today because I want to hear that the courts and the Department of justice are taking it seriously and dealing with it. There is a lot of this happening. If there is a pattern here, if this activity is organised, we need to get to the bottom of it, take it on and deal with it. All communities should be able to have nice things. These communities have lobbied for these nice things. The Minister of State has a very good sense of the importance to communities, including in his own area, of playgrounds and green facilities. I raise this issue with him with a view to the Department of justice taking it seriously and working with the relevant authorities to get to the bottom of it.

Sentiment score: 0.05

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I call for anybody who has any information on any of these incidents, particularly in my area of Dublin Bay North, to report them to Coolock Garda station. We must get to the bottom of this. By way of more background on Darndale Park, I received an email from a teacher in Our Lady Immaculate school in Darndale. She states: "The playground located behind the school has been closed on over 600 children between the two schools and the Jigsaw crèche. [They] have missed out on the chance to play there since May." They continue to miss out on that chance. Darndale is a long-standing area and one with deprivation. It is beyond belief that people would do that to their own communities. The eco toilets in St. Anne's Park were put in mainly for the use of underage girls' teams. There are no changing facilities on that edge of the park. It meant teams coming from afar to play on the pitches in St. Anne's Park would have toilets to use. Those toilets were wrecked. In the case of Kilmore, all my council colleagues, and I was on the council until last year, campaigned for that playground for a long time. They badgered the city council into delivering a playground in Kilmore Park. Within weeks of it opening, the city council had to lock it because it had been damaged. It is kind of depressing. I am a fairly reasonable and rational person but this stuff makes me angry. Communities deserve to have decent facilities. People deserve to be able to play and enjoy the outdoors in facilities like these. They are used by many different people and groups in so many different ways. The one thing they all share is that they use them for enjoyment. Now they have been wrecked. I appreciate the Minister of State's comments on the number of incidents. It looks like something else is going on here. I reinforce that point and ask again that, as he suggested, the Minister take it up in the Department to try to get to the bottom of it.

Sentiment score: 0.04