Councillor calls on gardaí to visit schools to tackle 'disgusting behaviour' after playground vandalisms
Vivienne Clarke
The chairperson of the North Central area committee of Dublin City Council has called on An Garda Síochána to visit schools to warn young people against the “disgusting behaviour” of vandalising playgrounds.
Cllr Daryl Barron told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that the vandalism of a playground at Oscar Traynor Park in Coolock on Sunday night was “absolutely appalling” and was, unfortunately, part of a growing trend of such incidents, which were then used as “clickbait.”
The damage had been caused by “young delinquents, mindless thugs”, he said.
“This is not the first arson attack with fire damage in the north central area. And we've had the new toilets in St. Anne's that have been badly damaged," he said.
"Hopefully, we're gonna get these repaired in the coming weeks. They haven't even opened yet, and other playgrounds and other sports facilities have been targeted by young individuals, and I would appeal to people locally to make appeals to An Garda Síochána in relation to these serious events.”
Mr Barron said that the damage to the playground in Coolock could be up to €100,000.
“We spent over close to a quarter of a million on this playground in Kilmore, and we opened two new playgrounds in the area in May, June of this year. One in Harmonstown and one in Kilmore. The one in Harmonstown was damaged as well recently over the summer. So it's an issue that's ongoing now and something that we're gonna have to prevent in the future.”
Dublin City Council was going to have to “seriously look” at how CCTV was used at such facilities to ensure that “pieces of public infrastructure and social infrastructure like this isn't damaged.
“That's public taxpayers' money that's been destroyed by mindless tugs. Young individuals have damaged these pieces of equipment, and it's not the only areas that have been damaged with sports facilities, playing pitches," Mr Barron said.
"This is just absolutely appalling, and we have to call out this for being mindless and absolutely disgusting.
“I think this is something that we need to look at as a fad. It's something that is like TikTok, people looking for clickbait, for people to actually look at online and say it's going viral and young people going viral just for a few likes on TikTok or Snapchat or wherever these young people are doing it and it's absolutely disgraceful.
“I think the education piece is going to be very important and I would appeal to An Garda Síochána to go talk to local schools and young people in particular. We have to mitigate against this, we have to look at ways and measures to mitigate against this. And I think realistically education is one thing. But also dealing with the CCTV technology, I think is going be very important.”
