A local Dublin city councillor says some people carry knives for fear of being attacked. It follows the death of a teenager last week, and a number of other serious incidents in the inner city in recent weeks.
Sinn Féin Councillor Janice Boylan represents the north inner-city. She was speaking amid an increase in knife crime in the capital in recent weeks, and the death of a teenager.
She has brought in a motion calling on the Lord Mayor Hazel Chu to invite the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, Justice Minister Helen McEntee and other stakeholders to come up with ‘workable solutions’ to tackle the rise in knife crime.
Councillor Boylan said the solution has to be a wider one, to help people in those areas feel safe.
“I know some people are nervous, and they’re carrying knives around with them because they fear attack, they fear getting robbed.
“But that can’t be the case – we cannot have members of society carrying weapons that can kill and seriously maim around with them just because they feel unsafe.
“It’s up to us as a society to make the area safer for all of these people, so that’s where the resources come in. It’s not OK to carry knives, that it’s absolutely not OK to enter into an argument with anybody and produce a knife“.
“It’s two-pronged: it needs to be education and it needs to be fully resourced, where we have the Garda on the ground and they’re able to tackle any altercation that they come across“.
She said there were four stabbing incidents in an eight day period in the north inner-city.
“They’re the ones that obviously were reported in the media, and there is obviously cases where youths are getting involved and bringing knives out with them and getting involved in activities that they obviously shouldn’t be getting involved in“.
“It’s something that’s been happening a long, long time and it’s something that really needs to be addressed seriously – especially in light of somebody loosing their life.”
