I wish the Minister of State well in his new brief and also wish my constituency colleague Jim O'Callaghan well in his new brief. I was going to start by giving praise to gardaí and the work they do, but having listened to Deputy Lawless's contribution I find it really frustrating that somebody in this Chamber would stand up and belittle gardaí in the way-----
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-----he has just done.
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To suggest there are no-----
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I did mention the Deputy's name.
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Am I not allowed identify things that are being said in this House and to challenge those things? That is an extraordinary-----
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Precisely.
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Those of us who are public representatives, which is every single one of us in this room, deal with community gardaí every day of the week. The public watching this listen to and deal with community gardaí every day of the week and the public have huge faith and trust in community gardaí. They do not view gardaí as something to be featured on social media. That is not what this is about. We need more gardaí. Everybody recognises that challenge. We have to recruit more gardaí. That is exactly what the Government is doing in its recruitment campaign. We must persuade people to come into the Garda, but we must also protect our gardaí. Over 300 gardaí were assaulted last year. They are men and women who are bravely putting themselves in harm’s way in order to protect our safety and security and they need to be championed for the work they do in all our communities. We need to do more to support the work they do because we cannot police our way out of the problems of security and safety across the country, and in my city of Dublin in particular. There is a plan for dealing with safety in our city and it is not all on the shoulders of An Garda Síochána, but by increasing patrols in the city, which has happened over the last year, we have seen an increase in detections, arrests and prosecutions. Despite this we still have major safety challenges in our city. The ways to address those challenges are precisely written in the Dublin city task force report.
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