I just want to echo Senator Dooley’s concerns about the shooting incidents last night. I am from Finglas originally and I grew up there. It is a great community. It is not the set of “Love/Hate”. It is a real community with real people. We should be appalled, as legislators, at the casual manner in which a 21-year-old was shot in a car on Cardiffsbridge Road - and then the killing of a man in Ronanstown in Clondalkin last night. According to initial reports, six to eight shots were discharged in rapid succession. As is very often the case with these shootings, there is a person who is high on drugs - polysubstance abuse - and they are using a weapon very often like these Glock automatic pistols. They are weapons that are designed for conventional combat and they have a planning range of between 30 m and 50 m. They were discharged, in the case of the Ronanstown incident, outside a family home, where there are children, neighbours and people sleeping. It is unacceptable.

At the moment, Ireland has a homicide rate roughly the European average of about 0.7 per 100,000 people. However, that statistic masks an underlying trend that is deeply disturbing. For example, in Ireland between 2005 and 2015, 201 Irish citizens were murdered by firearm. In the same period in the UK, which has a population approaching 80 million people, only 450 were killed by firearms. Homicide by firearm, or gun killings, in Ireland are five times the European average. Think about that as legislators - five times the European average.

The principal victims are young men with criminal convictions. We did not tolerate that level of gun crime during the Troubles. I suspect this was partially because legislators, Senators, Deputies, judges and senior police officers felt that they might be targets. However, because it is happening in our working-class communities and because it is happening to young men, we are allowing this situation to get a grip in our communities.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 38% of Ireland's homicides are by firearm. This year, we have had seven gun killings, five of which were drug-related. We have also had countless shooting incidents where, by a miracle, there have been no fatalities. These communities are being intimidated by these gangs. This is narco-terrorism and these are groups that have links to the Lyra McKee shootings and the shooting of gardaí up around Dundalk. There is an intimate link between organised crime, drug trafficking, people trafficking and these type of shootings and we should not allow them to intimidate good communities and the great people of places like Finglas and Clondalkin. We should not abandon them to this rule by force and intimidation. I agree with Senator Dooley that the answer to this is not to arm the Garda but to get the guns out of our communities and away from those young people. We need increased investment in education, a health-led approach to drugs and so on. I hope that some time in the new year we could get the Minister for Justice to come in to debate this because gun culture and the disproportionate number of homicides by firearm is a sinister problem that is getting a grip in Ireland.

I welcome our guests from Ballinrobe Community School to Seanad Éireann. I hope they enjoy the day in Leinster House and hopefully they will come back some day as Members of either Chamber.

I agree with Senators Clonan and Dooley. It is important that we have that debate with the Minister for Justice because, as has been said by both Members, people are dying on our streets and communities are being left behind. We need to have that debate with the Minister as early in the new year as possible.

I also want to welcome the announcement from the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, under the shared island initiative, of a €7.6 million investment in tourism and marketing initiatives, which will include connecting the Wild Atlantic Way and the Causeway Coastal Route. The Leader will know, because I have raised it with her numerous times, that this is something I have been advocating for over a number of years. It is my firm belief, whether it is in crime prevention, community safety, our fantastic tourism offering across the island, our sporting endeavours or any issue, Ireland works best when we work together.

An announcement was also made yesterday of €2 million for cross-Border Irish language and Ulster Scots initiatives. When the Committee on the Irish Language, Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking Community visited Belfast a number of weeks ago, we heard a keen interest from the groups we met across the city that they wanted to do more on an all-island basis. The Cathaoirleach will know the interconnectedness of the Irish-speaking community and they really want to tap into that. Hopefully that is a sign of things to come in the future. Sinn Féin published its Explore More tourism document last year, which set out our plan for tourism, including extending globally recognised brands such as the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland's Ancient East in order that we can help to create jobs, rebuild our economy and put money back in people's pockets. I say all this fully conscious of Tourism Ireland's role and remit to promote the island internationally as one tourism destination and conscious of the fact that we have no equivalent Minister in the North. That is yet another reason the Democratic Unionist Party should get back to work and stop blocking the opportunities that initiatives like this present to people. Even that unfortunate reality should not stop the local authorities, particularly those along the north coast and through the east, coming together with tourism promotion agencies to tap into the opportunity offered by this.

As indicated by my colleague, Senator Boylan, last week in her contribution on Thursday's Order of Business, we will be opposing today's Order of Business because of the nature of the Planning and Development and Foreshore (Amendment) Bill 2022 that is before us this week. The committee had not concluded pre-legislative scrutiny of it and there are a number of serious concerns with this Bill. I appreciate the Leader's work in this regard and she did her best for us but for the reasons Senator Boylan outlined last week, this warranted much more time, attention and respect to Members to be able to contribute and make input to this Bill going forward.