‘I believe these statistics are pulling the wool over the eyes of people’
By Mary Dennehy
SOUTH Dublin County Council’s anti-social statistics came under scrutiny at the West Tallaght Local Policing Forum, where it was claimed that the ‘low’ stats provided “pulled the wool” over people’s eyes.
Recently, The Echo published the council’s anti-social behaviour stats for 2017, which were released at April’s Tallaght Area Committee meeting.
Some of the anti-social incidents reported to the council last year included drug activity (17), criminal activity (18), joyriding (6) and violence, intimidation and harassment (36).
No incidents of racisms in the Tallaght area were, according to the stats, reported to the council in 2017.
However, after reading the stats in The Echo, some members of the community have claimed that the figures are not a true representation of the issues within communities.
“These statistics are impossible to believe,” one community worker said at this week’s local policing forum in the Maldron Hotel, Tallaght.
“There is something seriously wrong with the mechanism for reporting anti-social behaviour if these are the stats.
“I believe these statistics are pulling the wool over the eyes of the people of Tallaght.”
Resources
“How are we ever supposed to get the resources we need with these stats?”
Hugh Hogan, a senior executive officer with the council, was present at the meeting and said: “If people do not report it to us, it doesn’t get recorded.
“Reporting it to the gardai does not mean it ends up in our statistics.”
He added: “These statistics are reports of anti-social [activity] in a council house… it does not include reports of anti-social behaviour in an area.
“However, we are moving to a new computer system that may be able to capture areas rather than just homes.”
Suggestions were made during the course of the meeting that a better system for the recording of anti-social reports by the council be created, alongside an awareness campaign to inform communities on how to report incidents.
It was also advised that communities need to feel confident that something will be done if they do report an incident.
Tallaght Superintendent Ian Lackey told those gathered that if a more formalised communication was needed between gardai and the council then he would “give that assurance”.
