Antisocial Behaviour Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-30 ============================================================ Colm Brophy (FG), Dublin South-West I am here on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan. I know the Senator has engaged directly with him on this issue. He is very aware of her concerns in this area. Unfortunately he cannot be here today. The Government is committed to the principle that wherever they live in Ireland, people should feel safe. Building safe and secure communities across the country by investing in An Garda Síochána is a top priority for this Government. The Government wants every part of the country to be a safe space for people to live and work in. The Minister secured a record investment in budget 2026 of €2.74 billion for An Garda Síochána. Antisocial behaviour is a broad term often used to describe a range of actions and behaviours that violate social norms in specific contexts. I am conscious of the very damaging impact, which the Senator clearly outlined in her contribution, it can have on our communities. Along with increased Garda recruitment and resources, the Government is taking a range of targeted and integrated measures to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour generally. They include introducing community safety partnerships around the country to develop community safety plans for every area, which touches on the point the Senator made about community involvement being central to tacking this. They also include continued expansion of youth justice and youth diversion measures to reduce youth offending and improve safety for everyone in the community. The budget allocation for youth justice measures has almost doubled from 2020 to 2026, with a significant allocation of €7.3 million in additional core Exchequer funding for youth justice measures announced as part of budget 2026, bringing the total allocation in this area to €43 million. Strengthening the laws around antisocial behaviour orders enables swifter action by gardaí in such cases. The national roll-out and deployment of body-worn cameras for gardaí is also a very important part. Local community safety partnerships, LCSPs, bring together a broad range of relevant stakeholders, including local councillors, An Garda Síochána, local residents, community representatives, business and education representatives and a range of statutory agencies, including the HSE and Tusla in each local authority. The Minister recently appointed the membership of the final LCSP in Limerick on 9 June, meaning that all 36 of the partnerships are now formally established. Each LCSP will be required to develop and implement its own tailored community safety plan. The partnerships will take a strategic approach to their work, so that issues arising can be dealt with in a co-ordinated manner and addressed collectively by relevant service providers in partnership with the community. While there has been an approximate 25% increase in the population of 12- to 17-year-olds over the past ten years, the number of children coming to the attention of the Garda national youth diversion bureau has remained steady, pointing to a reduction in youth offending. Between 2012 and 2022, there has been a drop in total criminal incidents involving children of 35%. There has been a reduction of 31% in the number of children in detention over the past ten years. With the official opening of the POINT youth diversion project in Tipperary on 18 June, youth diversion is available to all children and young people across the country. There are currently 92 youth diversion projects and 14 targeted youth diversion projects across the country. These are co-funded by the Department of justice and the European Union. With these funds, these projects employ dedicated youth justice workers who respond daily to the needs of young people across the country. I appreciate that the Senator is talking specifically of the incidents she raised, but the national response is also being mirrored at local level. That is an indication of the seriousness with which this is taken by the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, and myself. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-30