JEAN COOPER sits in an office above one of her two shops on Dublin's O'Connell Street. Beside her are six video screens, monitoring activity on the shopfloor. There is a security man on the door. Cooper says that in the shop there's some sort of incident shoplifting or an attempted robbery about once every half an hour.
"It's appalling and it's getting worse," she says.
Things have been particularly bad recently. Drug addicts, forced from housing estates and flat complexes by anti-drug activists, have taken to hanging around the Anna Livia fountain in O'Connell Street, where buying and selling of drugs has become more common. Cooper says the gardai do not seem concerned about it.
"Time was there used to always be a guard at the GPO, but he's not there anymore.
Cooper runs a newsagency and cosmetics shop called Lir, opposite the GPO, and another up the street called Gresham News. Recently, she has hired a security firm to place a man at the door of each, at an annual cost of £40,000.
She is distressed today because, she says, one of the security guards was stabbed recently with a blood-filled syringe, as he was delivering cash to the bank up the street.
The security man had been forced against the wall by a man with the blood-filled syringe, who held it to his neck. "He trembled, he handed over the money, and he begged the guy not to stick the syringe in him. But as the thief pulled away he gave the security man a quick jab on the hand with the syringe, apparently to put him into shock so that he would not be chased down the street."
The security man won't know for a year whether he has HIV or not. Cooper points to boxes of tablets near her desk. "That guy is on all those tablets there and he's going through hell at the moment. I spoke to the detectives and I asked them what about these famous street cameras, can they not pick it up? And the answer I got was no." She says she was told the cameras can zoom in on individuals or small groups, but obviously cannot be watching everyone on the street all the time.
"Well, what good is that to us?" she asks.
Cooper has been working on this street for 10 years, and feels the upper end is being allowed to decay before her eyes. Not only are drug dealers gathering, but the closure of the tourist office and other businesses has reduced the numbers passing up the street, she says. Even the Corporation's large flower pots only cover the lower end of the street.
"The Corporation has divided the city in two. Lovely Temple Bar and Grafton Street, and lousy Henry Street, people selling cigarettes, the Anna Livia and all that goes with it."
She says she knows "hundreds" of shoplifters, "dippers" (pick-pockets) and other thieves. When she started in the business on the street there might be a couple of shoplifting incidents a day, and something more serious about four times a year.
Now the pattern is constant robbery of even small amounts of goods. The thieves used go for the higher-value stock, she says, but now they will try to grab anything they might be able to sell later.
"That's where I see it has changed. Your £1.99 twinpack shampoos aren't safe anymore. We used not worry about those, we used to say they aren't interested in those. Now they'll go for Lynx, £2.29, they get £1 for it in a pub. Old Spice £6 a bottle, they get £3 for that. Lynx aftershave £6.99 they get £3 for that."
Cooper says she has been too busy to pay much attention to the election campaign, but she thinks politicians are moving in the wrong direction. "They're zoning in too much on this tax bloody thing, we're all so used to paying tax now we should continue paying it. Put the money into crime immediately. These buildings that are not being used, make them remand centres. Don't let them out."
For Cooper, imprisonment comes before sympathy, especially for drug addicts. She looks back to difficulties in her own personal life years ago. "I'd a choice in, to go on drugs or get through it. We all have a choice in life to make. So I don't feel sorry for them. Everything I've built up I've built up hard, through 90 hours a week, hard work."
She flicks through her "security books" - the shop's records of the names and addresses of all apprehended shoplifters, and the serial numbers of the gardai who took them away.
"There's she says, pointing to one entry. "There he is again. He was disgusted that day, he's a big-time shoplifter but I got him with only £12 of stuff."
The she invited The Irish Times to join her and her security man, Barry, for a stroll up O'Connell Street towards Parnell Square. As we left the shop she predicted that we would not see a garda, and we would witness drug dealing.
It was about 5.30 pm. on a Thursday afternoon. As we walked up the street, Barry nodded towards a youth on a mountain bike at the Anna Livia fountain. "That's one of the dealers," he said. As we watched, two young men came up to the youth, and he pointed up the street towards the taxi rank. They walked up to the indicated spot, and the youth on the mountain bike waited a couple of minutes, looked around, and then cycled up to them. In a moment the three were in a huddle, there was a quick shuffling of hands into and out of pockets, and then they moved off in different directions and were gone. We walked up to the Parnell monument, back down to the GPO and, as predicted, we did not see a garda.