YESTERDAY EVENING I walked home from Leinster House.

It’s a walk I’ve made countless times over the years. First as a councillor, now as a TD for Dublin Central.

Down through College Green, onto Westmoreland Street, across O’Connell Bridge and up O’Connell Street. I know every part of that walk.

Yesterday, though, it felt different.

Not because I saw anything entirely new. It was because none of it surprised me any more.

On Westmoreland Street, before I’d even reached the bridge, a young garda was talking to a woman sitting in a doorway. She was clearly in the grips of addiction. There was no shouting. No confrontation. He spoke to her gently and with respect.

But so did the reality of what he was actually there to do. He couldn’t treat her addiction. He couldn’t get her into recovery. The only thing he could really do was remind her she was breaching her bail conditions and ask her to move on.

There’s a quiet sadness in how deeply unfair that is on everyone involved.

Inadequate resourcing

We’re asking gardaí to deal with problems that policing alone can never solve. Addiction, homelessness, untreated mental illness, poverty. These aren’t policing failures, but we have placed our criminal justice system in a position of responding to crises that are, at their heart, failures of the State.

By the time I got to O’Connell Bridge, the mood had completely changed.

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Groups of young men standing at either end of the bridge openly dealing drugs. No attempt to hide it.

They were confident. Organised. Operating in groups, protecting their trade through intimidation and the threat of violence.

We all know it’s happening. Prime Time showed exactly these scenes after filming there over four weeks, only a couple of weeks ago. This isn’t hidden from the public. It isn’t hidden from........

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