I thank Labour for bringing forward the motion. Over the past number of weeks, community safety fora meetings have been happening in Dublin South-Central. It has been very interesting to see, over the number of years I have been attending, the waning of Garda numbers. At the moment, however, we are on a high where people are saying there is higher visibility in Dublin South-Central for gardaí, particularly in the Crumlin area, where there is a concerted effort for gardaí to be present there. This is highly welcome. That is not withstanding what I hear from residents and gardaí themselves at those safety forum meetings that sometimes there are challenges for the gardaí in doing their job - that there are not enough numbers and they are not able to respond to phone calls because there is not enough of them. With the level of need in Dublin South-Central – an urban area with great disadvantage where there is a huge level of crime in some instances with domestic violence in particular having increased since Covid-19 – we have seen gardaí are not able to respond as they would like. They do not have the numbers. I have been to visit schools which have asked me what is happening around e-scooters. Gardaí need real clarity on that law and it needs to be hurried up. They are ruining parks and communities in the area. It is dangerous. Older people and people with disabilities are particularly nervous about e-scooters. I want to commend the gardaí on the work they are doing in schools and youth services. When I have a public meeting, they turn up. They really are doing their best. As Deputy Gannon said, when we see young people being groomed into crime, when there is a good relationship with the gardaí that can help to offset that. The difficulty is that Fagan’s law is there but nobody is being prosecuted under it. As far as I know, there has only been three prosecutions in the past while. That is not good enough because we know it is happening and it needs to stop.

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