Q: What needs to be done to make the city feel safer?
There’s no silver bullet for this one, and while a bigger Garda presence on the streets is the obvious answer, policing alone won’t make our communities safer or eliminate people’s safety concerns. Our local Gardaí do of course have an important role to play and should be well resourced in that regard, and councillors have a role in terms of identifying and highlighting areas where greater resources are needed. We can also work with Gardai and community policing teams to ensure the right approach is taken to tackling the issues that cause people to feel unsafe, and the Joint Policing Committees and Community Safety Forums have been great platforms for that.
We need investment in the Garda Youth Diversion Programme and in fighting the root causes of crime by providing more space for young people and improving youth work supports. Ultimately (and again, I refer to my experience on the Local Community Development Committee) strong communities are safe communities, so we need to support our local partnerships and the community and voluntary sector to provide structure, activities, guidance, social outlets and empathetic engagement to ensure that young people don’t get caught up in criminality.
Finally, our communities need to be safe by design – a liveable city is a city where people feel safe in their communities. Social spaces, rest areas, walkability, permeability, and accessible local services all equal people on our streets and that provides a level of passive surveillance that naturally discourages bad behaviour and makes everyone feel safer. I’ve completed a Women’s Safety Audit of Crumlin and Kimmage that identified a number of issues I was able to get resolved, like poor or broken lighting, lack of safe crossings etc. It was a really valuable exercise and it’s something I would seek the council’s support to carry out in other neighbourhoods in Kimmage Rathmines in the future.
And for those whose safety concerns emanate from traffic, speeding cars or footpath parking, I want to ensure that everyone feels safe walking, cycling, relaxing, socialising, exercising and enjoying themselves in their community. We can achieve that sense of safety by lowering speed limits, building more cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings and increasing pedestrianised areas.
