McEntee launches new All Island Community Safety Network

Helen McEntee

The project is being funded through the Community Safety Innovation Fund, which seeks to reinvest seized proceeds of crime directly back into projects to improve community safety.

Community Safety is a priority topic at both national and local levels and this Network will facilitate the sharing of ideas, good practice, and projects in relation to Community Safety and Policing engagement across the island of Ireland, North and South.

The Network will offer communities an opportunity to hear first-hand about the successes of other groups across the entire island and offer them the chance to shine a light on their own examples of effective collaborative community safety projects that might be mirrored elsewhere.

The establishment of this network is timely given the recent enactment of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act, which allows for the establishment of Local Community Safety Partnerships on a nationwide basis

The project builds on the project partners’ previous experience collaborating on Beyond Borders: The All-Island Community Safety Conference held in November 2022, when over 300 attendees from both jurisdictions came together to get an insight into best practice in Community Safety not only from Ireland but further afield.

The Network is a collaboration between Longford Community Safety Partnership, Drogheda Implementation Board and Newry Mourne and Down Policing and Community Safety Partnership.

Ms McEntee said: “Community safety is about people being safe and feeling safe in their communities. Local communities, key workers in the area and local representatives are often best placed to know and identify issues that will improve community safety in their areas.

“But learning from what has worked in other communities is also important, so that best practice can be mainstreamed. This all-Island network will allow statutory and community partners to hear about examples of effective collaborative community safety projects and to develop better cross border relationships to enhance community safety across the island of Ireland.

“I am delighted to launch the Network today, wish the project partners well and look forward to seeing the initiatives and project concepts which emerge positively impacting communities across Ireland.”