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DO YOU FEEL safe in your community during the day? At night? 

Is Ireland a safe place to live? 

These are some of the questions the government is asking the public in a new survey.

The public have been asked how safe or unsafe they feel in parks and public spaces, using public transport and walking on the streets.

People are also asked whether they have personally experienced violence, fraud, theft, threat, public disorder, hate crime, dangerous driving and other problems.

They’re also asked to recommend “one key action” to improve community safety, in fewer than 100 words.

The public’s feedback will be taken into account in the drafting of a new National Strategy for Improving Community Safety by the newly established National Office for Community Safety within the Department of Justice.

The government says it’s taking a new and different approach to community safety, promoting cross-agency, “whole-of-government” collaboration.

The National Office for Community Safety is overseeing the establishment of new Local Community Safety Partnerships (LCSPs) nationwide. The 34 new fora are now up and running in most councils, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said yesterday.

The LCSPs replace the old Joint Policing Committees where councillors and Oireachtas members could hold gardaí to account for local policing decisions, and the changeover has not been without controversy. Among other changes, the new fora are likely to predominantly meet behind closed doors, with the media excluded.

The National Strategy for Improving Community Safety will be published in March 2026. 

Launching the survey, O’Callaghan said the new strategy will “enable public service bodies and communities to work together in a coordinated manner to make communities safer”.

“I encourage members of the public to fill out the survey and have their say on the issues that matter most to them in helping us to build safer communities,” he said. 

The survey is here and remains open until 27 February.