Foreign visitors are shocked by our crime-ridden capital
THREE men with their trousers around their ankles openly injecting heroin in a Dublin city centre street; a man slumped for 24 hours outside the historic GPO, and good Samaritans attacked and beaten up when they tried to stop a fight between two men. This is just one day’s calls from a recent edition of Liveline. When we raised this issue with the gardaí they simply replied that recorded crime in the city was actually down – adding triumphantly that there were only a handful of crimes reported in Dublin’s O’Connell Street. This Garda statement was jumped on by the Irish Times, which complained that Liveline callers had ‘painted the city as an unending cavalcade of crime and dissolution, with nary a garda to be seen’.
Recently I hosted a group of young Australian visitors and I asked them what – apart from the weather – what was the main difference between their home town of Sydney and Dublin, both beautiful cities built on magnificent bays. The four of them piped up in unison – ‘street crime’.
Given that Sydney has three times the population of Dublin, this is a shocking observation. They were particularly struck by what they witnessed in Dublin city centre – regarding the boardwalk as a no-go area – and Temple Bar as dangerous. They also remarked on aggressive begging. Remember, these were not Australians from Ayers Rock but hardened city-dwellers well used to the hustle, bustle and often rich and unpredictable tapestry of city life.
So the damning report by the Garda Inspectorate this week, which discovered that crime was significantly under-recorded and detection rates were just over half that claimed by the Garda, comes as no surprise to readers of this newspaper or listeners to Liveline.
The absence of new technology in the force was highlighted by the Garda Inspectorate, which pointed
SHANE MacTHOMáIS, one our great social historians, died unexpectedly eight months ago. But his role as tour guide at Glasnevin cemetery is brilliantly captured in One Million Dubliners. Aoife Kelleher’s film portrays the dead who populate our biggest cemetery. See it on TV this Thursday at 10.15pm on RTÉ One.
out that we are 30 years behind other comparable police organisations. When you consider that a new smartphone or iPad is released every 30 months, this is a frightening revelation.
Seven years ago on Liveline, we highlighted a campaign by deaf people to be able to text an emer- gency call to the gardaí. They pointed out that despite the fact that texting has been around for nearly 20 years, they had no way of contacting the gardaí in an emergency.
It was a simple request that seemed to baffle the powers that be at the time, and it took another year before a system was put in place.
Apart from the Garda traffic Twitter account, there has been little effort to harness the powers and time-saving capabilities of new technology. The website insists you can contact your local station by email, but the addresses seem to be akin to the third secret of Fatima.
The last thing the Irish people needed was such a damning report on our gardaí. After all, as a nation we hold the force in such high esteem. Physical attacks on gardaí are simply not tolerated in Irish society and rightly so. But this demoralising, damning report requires action.