Crime is one of the big issues in the current election campaign. Rosita Boland knocks on doors in a comfortable south Co Dublin suburb to hearhow experiences and perceptions of crime there affect people's lives

It is a mid-week morning and I'm on Priory Drive, off the Stillorgan dual carriageway, having chosen the road at random. Priory Drive is a street like many others in south Co Dublin - tree-lined, large semi-detached houses, well-kept gardens, Neighbourhood Watch stickers in porch windows, and prominent alarms - quiet, unashamedly comfortable, anonymous, and with the mature settled feeling that is the backbone definition of the word "suburb".

At the first house I call to, with the intention of asking people if they have had any direct experience of crime and their views on it, a woman is polishing the brass letterbox on the front door. "I'm only the cleaning woman," she says. I explain I'd be just as interested to hear from her on crime. "I've no time to talk to you," she says flatly.

At the second and third houses, no one is home. At the fourth house, I wait for five minutes while the elderly lady inside goes through a complex process of unlocking and unchaining the door. "Crime is number one on my political agenda," she declares. "Horrific. Appalling. All those knife attacks." She indicates her burglar alarm. "I'd like to think it is a deterrent. Neighbours who didn't have alarms got burgled. I always lock myself in."

At the fifth house, there are two young women, one visiting the other. The woman who lives there had her car stolen three years ago from a nearby driveway. "It was found burned out on a council estate. Are you allowed to print that, or is it not PC?"

Both women agree that they would never come home from town alone at night. "When we're having a girls' night out, we always call each other beforehand and agree to park in the same car-park. Then we walk each other to our cars. We have to - there is no good public transport at night."

There is no reply at the next five houses. At the eleventh house, there is a very angry middle-aged woman. "I've been robbed and broken into. The Government should do here what they want to do in Britain - take welfare money from the parents of the delinquents. They are far too lenient here, in and out of prison." She will not be voting. "It's a conscious decision. I voted last time, but now I have no faith in any government. They're all a pack of gangsters and I'm disgusted."

Next door, there is an elderly couple. "We've never been burgled, because we have a 15-foot wall at the end of the garden, so this is a no-go area for stealing televisions," the man says with conviction. Then he pauses and looks a little uncertain. "Do they still steal televisions?"

He has strong views on the judiciary system. "Prisons are holiday camps. And our judiciary are greatly to blame - they give bail to people who have committed violence, and who should be locked up."

It's been five years since they were in the city centre at night. "We wouldn't dare go into town at night now. Full of blackguards! We used to go to the Gate and the Abbey all the time, but now if you're in that area at night, you're looking for trouble. That loss of going out at night is a big restriction on our lives, because we so enjoyed it."

The thirteenth house is empty. At the fourteenth, the door is answered by a woman who turns out to be the sister of someone I know socially, and who recognises me. I am as surprised as she is to have ended up on her doorstep, but shouldn't be; you are never very far from some point of local reference in Ireland, as our politicians sometimes forget to their detriment.

"Going into town at night, I would plan how I'd get home," she says. "I prefer to take the car. I'm nervous of taxis - even if you could get one . . . I always think of those young women who went missing when I think of taxis."

Next door, a harassed-looking woman answers the door; says she is only the child-minder and closes the door.

There is no reply at the next house. The seventeenth house has no plate, but turns out to be some type of surgery, and a young woman in a blue coat answers the door. "Nothing's ever happened to me," she says cheerfully. "And I hang round with very tall guys!" Would being on the city-centre streets at night bother her? She looks at me a bit oddly, and I realise I've asked a question which presents such an obvious answer that it has become a way of life for her, or a way of thinking. "I'd always be aware of what might happen. When I'm having a girls' night out, we always make arrangements together beforehand about getting home."

Next door, an elderly woman says: "Everyone I know has had a break-in. It's all drugs-related and things have got out of hand. There's not enough policing on the streets. The parents should be much more responsible for what their children do. The jail system is ridiculous - in one door and out the other. It's laughable! Not being punished for what they do is ridiculous."

Across the dual carriageway at the entrance to the Rise, flowers in memory to the two dead gardaí, hit by a stolen car, are still piled up. At the first house I call to, the fortyish man tells me about his mother's experience a couple of years ago. "She was burgled while visiting someone in hospital. They filled two suitcases with Waterford Glass and jewellery and then ordered a taxi. A neighbour saw them and took the number of the taxi. They traced the taxi: he'd left them to the boat in Dún Laoghaire. My mother was - and still is - very traumatised by that."

He blames drink for the rise in violent crime. "There's so much aggression now in young people when they get drunk. It's definitely worse than it was."

The next two houses are empty. At the fourth, a small white suspicious dog accompanies an elderly woman to the door. "I never buy anything at the door," she says instantly.

I show my Press Card and explain I work for The Irish Times, and what I am doing. "I don't need to buy The Irish Times, I have today's copy already," she says, and closes the door. She hasn't heard anything I've said, because she simply doesn't trust any stranger calling to her door, and that is somehow one of the more telling experiences of the morning.

There are a lot of dogs barking behind the doors of empty houses on the Rise. The woman at the eighth house was mugged near the Ilac Centre, and had her car stolen. She says some of her neighbours have been burgled twice. "It seems to have become a way of life - cars being stolen and houses burgled," she says matter-of-factly.

The couple at the next house have friends whose son was viciously attacked on Morehampton Road. "We have people visiting who say they feel much more comfortable in Chicago or Sydney than in Dublin. You listen to that and it makes you feel less safe here."

Two doors away, the retired couple have had two major break-ins within the last few years, once at night while they were asleep. They don't go to town at night any more.

'We positively go out of our way to avoid it, because of the bad publicity it gets," the man says. "It's an attitude of mind as much as anything else, and it's the attitude that's hard to change. Changing that perception would require a more visible policing presence. If you don't feel safe, you're not safe."

The next two houses have each had break-ins. "The locks on the doors, the alarms and the fact we all have dogs tells its own story. You'd be foolish not to be aware of crime," says one woman. Another witnessed her neighbour's car being stolen recently by men in balaclavas. And those few who have no direct experience of crime all perform the same superstitious act of touching the wood of their door-jambs when they say so. "It's not because there isn't crime around that I haven't been burgled or mugged," states one young woman with unhappy conviction. "It's simply because, so far, I've just been lucky."