Crime Prevention Dail Éireann — 2026-01-27 ============================================================ Maurice Quinlivan (SF), Limerick City I have been asked by the community to specifically ask the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, to visit the area and to talk to the local chief superintendent and community leaders. We are seriously concerned about what is going on in the area and I do not think anybody is grasping the severity of what we are worried about. The Garda knows exactly who is involved and who is gaining from this misery. I appreciate that the gathering of information and investigations need to be thorough, but the community must see a robust response. Without one, I fear we are seeing escalation and a deep frustration within the community and, unfortunately, we might see the loss of life. We in Limerick have had some challenges with criminality in a small minority of areas that can be fixed. These are areas with good people and are communities which utterly despise the organised crime gangs and their criminality. They just want to get on with and live their lives. The tentacles of criminality spread to all the communities, from urban to rural and urban centres to suburban towns. As I said earlier, our gardaí do a difficult job and crucial work every day as they serve and protect communities, and they have my full support in doing that. We have seen from previous operations, such as Operation Copóg, that when the resources and funding are put into Limerick and when the resources are put in to the Garda and it is supported properly, they work well in combating the type of organised activity I have been talking about and, more important, the force has the support of the community. I ask the Minister to visit the area and get involved. --- 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/dail/2026-01-27/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:01+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-27