I wrote to the Taoiseach and other Ministers at the end of May following the appalling series of gun murders in Dublin Bay North and asked what steps the Government was going to take. I detailed the outstanding work of our schools and a wide range of Dublin Bay North community bodies in fields like employment and enterprise, childcare and elder care, youth work and sports and drug rehabilitation. At that time, many community leaders who admired the Mulvey report on the north inner city, Creating a Brighter Future, believed that a similar programme and implementation board should be established for Dublin Bay North. The north inner city initiative, which my colleague, Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, was heavily involved in bringing forward, includes tackling crime and drugs; maximising education and training; integrating social services; and improving the physical landscape. There is a strong belief that we need a co-ordinated response involving all the existing local agencies, perhaps led by the Northside Partnership, An Garda Síochána, Dublin City and Fingal County Councils and key Departments. It should be fully resourced to tackle all the issues which gave rise to the recent upsurge in crime.

Is there a case for a national programme of support? Seven or eight of the 40 constituencies are particularly badly affected; the Taoiseach's own constituency is one of them. Will he launch a new national strategy to support investment in all areas experiencing cumulative disadvantage, perhaps led by a high-level interdepartmental group? I know that Departments are engaged on their own in carrying out important work. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs is carrying out a major reform of youth services but funding in the sector for most of our constituency was less than €2 million in 2018. The Department of Rural and Community Development, whose Minister is seated beside the Taoiseach, runs the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. However, as the Minister knows, the community enhancement programme only allocated €700,000 for Dublin. There is also continuing criticism of Seetec in respect of employment and youth employment.

With regard to legislation, after eight and a half years the Government has not brought forward the housing (regulation of approved housing bodies) Bill or reformed the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1997 to strengthen estate management. Despite the €1.76 billion 2019 Garda budget, people still feel generally that there needs to be much greater visibility of gardaí, especially in the evenings, with a doubling of community gardaí. When is the Government going to publish the long-promised policing and community safety Bill? The national recorded crime statistics for quarter 1 of 2019, which are statistics under reservation, show shocking increases across a whole range of crimes, including sexual offences, attempts or threats of murder and assault, kidnapping, robbery and extortion, fraud and deception, and controlled drug offences. All these are happening on the Taoiseach's watch and affecting all our constituencies, rural and urban, with seven or eight constituencies particularly badly affected.

What is the latest position with regard to the report of the working group chaired by Mr. Justice Sheehan? It is considering decriminalisation in respect of small amounts of drugs for personal use, which would allow the Garda to focus on very serious crime and drugs pushing. I understand the Taoiseach has the report but has not yet brought it to Cabinet.

There are a lot of specific questions there. I will do my best to answer them in the time allocated. I did receive the Deputy's letter and have read it. I am not sure if he received the response-----

Not from the Taoiseach himself.

-----but it is in train. In respect of legislation, we would expect to have the public and community safety Bill next year, which will bring into law many of the recommendations made by Kathleen O'Toole in the commission she led on the reform of policing. It is being worked on at the moment by the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, and the Department of Justice and Equality. Ideally, I would like to have the heads of a Bill this year and the legislation published and enacted through the course of next year.

On the housing Bill the Deputy asked about, I do not have a timeline but will ask the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to communicate with the Deputy and update him on it. I do not yet have the report from Mr. Justice Sheehan. I have not seen it. I know it is quite advanced and once I get it and have a chance to read it, I will bring it to Cabinet and publish it thereafter. As the Deputy will be aware, it is examining whether we should change our approach to dealing with drugs, moving away from one that is founded on criminal justice and enforcement to one that is more based on treating it as a health issue. I look forward to receiving that report once it is ready.

Our response to crime has to be twofold. As a former British Prime Minister once said, we need to be tough on crime and also tough on the causes of crime. We are tough on crime by increasing Garda resources. There are unprecedented resources now for the Garda and they are continuing to increase all the time. Additional gardaí were allocated to the Dublin stations quite recently, as the Deputy will know, reflecting the need for that to be done given the high levels of crime in Dublin. There has also been investment in ICT and equipment and vehicles, which will continue into next year and into the future. In terms of being tough on the causes of crime, that means tackling some of the underlying issues that cause people to choose a life of crime when others may not. Those are issues particularly related to social and educational disadvantage. We are doing that as well.

The north-east inner city initiative is a very good one. We have yet to see whether it has had good outcomes. What has been done has been very good. It is probably too early to judge whether the outcomes have been good because we cannot assess that at the moment. Unfortunately, as is often the case with a very targeted, very specific initiative, it would not be feasible to do that nationwide. We just would not have the capacity, the people, or the finances to do that in the ten or 20 other places that have been proposed, including places in my own constituency. Perhaps we can do something similar in those areas of deep disadvantage, including in the Deputy's constituency and in mine. We do have the community enhancement programme. One of the things we are examining is whether we should relaunch something similar to the revitalising areas through planning, investment and development, RAPID, programme which existed in the past, and identify ten or 20 areas of particular disadvantage around the country on an evidence basis and target them to do something similar to but not the same as the north-east inner city partnership.

Unfortunately, the Taoiseach is not tough enough on crime or on the causes of crime. We have a reasonably good social infrastructure in Dublin Bay North. Surely this is a moment when we need to be thinking about a national strategy. Some 25 years ago, the trade union movement led by Peter Cassells inspired the development of the whole local partnership approach. Surely there is a need at this time to do something similar. I am aware of budgetary matters and, indeed, will be meeting the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, at the Committee on Budgetary Oversight at 2 p.m. However, this is the kind of initiative we need.

Dublin Bay North has long been awaiting a new divisional Garda headquarters. I wrote to Commissioner Harris about that and urged him to consider a location for the headquarters in the greatly expanding north fringe. There is one site in particular just north of Darndale-Belcamp parish that would be a good site for that headquarters. In respect of the legislation available to An Garda Síochána, my former colleague on the Committee of Public Accounts, Deputy Durkan, has proposed that we should simply proscribe organised crime gangs and their members, because they are enemies of our State and our Republic.

Many of us would agree with Deputy Durkan that we should take that initiative.

What is the Taoiseach's response to the recent Supreme Court decision on mandatory minimum sentences, where the court struck down part of the Firearms Act?

The answer to the Deputy's initial question is "Yes". We are considering a revised and new approach to target areas of particular disadvantage in the State. There are a lot of programmes already, as the Deputy is aware, such as the local drug and alcohol task forces, DEIS in education, the school meals programme and the community enhancement programme. There is also €2 million set aside in the new GP contract to provide extra resources for the first time to GPs who are working in areas with high levels of disadvantage. This recognises there is a link between disadvantage and poor health. This will be the starting point for having a system such as DEIS, but for healthcare. I believe this will make a big difference. What we probably do not do well enough is joining it all up together. This is what we need to do and I have asked Ministers to work on this over the next couple of months.