Is there an argument to be made for increasing police firm-handedness in Dublin?

Even when the government decided to get tough on burglaries and changed the sentencing for those, the Judges still used what wiggle room they had to hand out light sentences.

The Judges will do it again and again, and the issue with any governmental changing here is that while they might intend for the lighter sentences to just apply to those who this is a first offence or who have little chance of ever reoffending those light guidelines will get applied to every piece of **** with a sob story.

You'd need to remove all the wiggle room out of sentencing so judges couldn't do it, and hopefully the EU doesn't take offence over the "independence of the courts"

Could your really do that to anyone force them to live in longford ...

If the authorities don't do something about the issue then Dublin is going to end up some US cities with a hollowed out core. Middle classes will shop in places like Dundrum and Kildare Village where private security keep scumbags at bay. Work from home means the same types of law abiding people will remain scarce in town too.

These types of threads always crack me up, the usual suspects sitting around destroying themselves on to their computers about scumbags who need wiping out when they would **** their pants if they had to have a conversation with someone from the inner city if they talked to them in real life.

Fetishizing garda violence for some reason? Is there a limit of the crimes that could get you a slap from the cops? Don't see them going around slapping the bankers who fucked this country?

To Hell or to Longford!

You missed the point, you said "Fed up listening to people moaning about this place [b]when they either don't live here or else wouldn't have money in their pockets or something to do during the day if they hadn't moved here.[/b]" I was pointing out that you can have money in your pocket and something to do during the day outside Dublin. And just because someone doesn't live there doesn't preclude them from having an opinion. Does the same logic apply to opinions on drugs you haven't tried?

It's hard to know what the answer is. One thing for sure, for anyone frequently around town, is that the city center has been really badly exposed through the lock downs.

Everyone knew there were serious issues around addiction and low level antisocial behaviour under the surface but it was kind of hidden to an extent when more people were around.

I walked between Mary Street and Abbey St the other day around 5pm and it was genuinely uncomfortable with random screaming fights, addicts and drunks being the majority around. I didn't see any actual scraps myself but it was easy to see you wouldn't have to wait long.

But mostly the impression I got is in terms of business, tourism or just shopping the northside is not a viable proposition at the moment.

I don't know about the southside but the northside is a pretty lost place atm.

Definitely needs to be more police but the whole area needs a lot more than that. Really gone down the tubes in the last couple of years.

I found the state of the place generally quite worrying and disconcerting. And it's not just the clientel hanging around. The place was absolutely manky and depressing. The run down buildings and dereliction don't help though it's always been that way.

So yeah more police with more powers but much more than that needs to be done.

Do they want the kids? Or the increased opportunities having kids bring them?

The greatest indicators of the educational attainment of any child will be the educational attainments of their parent(s) and, rather famously, the amount of books in the house they're raised in (it's a strong indicator of the parental attitude towards learning). If they're raised with no parental, peer or other role-model valuing education, they're unlikely to pay much heed to it themselves.

In a globalised world such as we live in, employment opportunities for the poorly educated are very poor: low skilled, minimum work (e.g. retail, cleaning etc.) is about as much as our society has to offer and when minimum wage employment doesn't offer much of a lifestyle increase over basic welfare entitlements it's easy to see why many turn their nose up at it.

Social housing is next to impossible to get for a young person living at home with their parent(s) (likely to already be in social housing) and the fastest way to bump your position on the waiting list is to have a child as a single parent. Combine that with poor sex education (via religious education and/or poor school attendance due to the afore-mentioned disdain for education) and it's not surprising that many young girls will opt to pop out an otherwise unwanted child as a means of improving their lot in life (€248 a week plus children's allowance and a "free" home are going to sound attractive to a poorly educated 16/17 year old particularly if they're coming from a troubled home-life of abuse, alcohol or drug dependency etc.).

I'm not saying I have the answers but it's easy enough to see how a young girl with poor options in life falls into the trap of creating another generation with similarly poor options and the "obvious" alternatives are either barbaric (refusing to help single young parents via a welfare system / going down the route of enforced sterilisation/abortion etc.) or politically and economically difficult (increasing taxation to fund better social services, supports and education and/or finding a way to provide low-skilled workers with gainful and meaningful employment).