Madam, – I would like to call upon the candidates of our political parties to pin their colours to the mast and declare if they will bother making the cleaning up of Dublin city centre a priority for the general election.
There are other issues besides the crippled economy and ruined banks to address, and one of them is the increasing problem of threatening behaviour by the drug- addled zombies of Dublin city.
I left Dublin for the UK five years ago and each time I return it pains me to see that this problem is worse. Last year I noticed that the boardwalk had been completely overrun with anti-social behaviour and open drug abuse. Seemingly, these people are unopposed in their takeover bid for this once very pleasant public amenity. When I returned in January of this year, I was particularly disturbed to see tourists being harassed and menaced by drug users on Grafton Street and College Green.
I witnessed two women attempt to pickpocket a Chinese tourist and was then horrified to encounter an extremely aggressive and threatening individual who was picking a fight with a student for walking on the same side of the pavement as him on Grafton Street. Not at any point over the entire weekend did I see a single on-duty garda.
How can we pull ourselves out of recession if we allow our capital city to fall into such chaos? Dublin city is fast becoming an intimidating embarrassment of a capital, and it cannot be tolerated. The people need to take their beautiful city back and the political parties and gardaí need to make this an urgent priority. – Yours, etc,