Every time public art goes on display, it seems, we tear it down. What's at the root of our hostility, asks Shane Hegarty.

By now they should have been sold, auctioned to raise money for charity, and had they been on show anywhere else it might have been different. But CowParade brought its public art to Ireland, and so, with seeming inevitability, its fibreglass models were vandalised.

One had its wings snapped off, another was decapitated. All had graffiti on them within hours of going on show in July, according to the exhibition's organisers. The animals on open display around Dublin had to be rescued, the temptation removed. The cows, which have since been exhibited more safely, behind glass and under the eyes of security guards, will still be auctioned, the funds going to children with disabilities and to the homeless, but it won't be until next month, eight weeks late.

Little more than a week after the cows were attacked a model pig was taken from a floating sculpture by the French artist Anne Ferrer. The resin sow, on show on the Eglinton Canal in Galway, turned up a few hours later, dumped on the steps of the city's cathedral, a large crack in its back.

The reaction, in Galway as elsewhere, was a mixture of disgust and resignation. We had been here before, after all. Pádraic Ó Conaire's sculpture on Eyre Square lost its head in 1999, and earlier this year a piece of contemporary sculpture in Newry, in Co Down, was smashed beyond repair. Give some people a target, it seems, and they will aim at it. The delightful sculpted shoppers on Liffey Street in Dublin had their bags stolen. The Anna Livia fountain, on O'Connell Street, was the city's most famous bin.

The attacks have affected other attempts to bring art to public spaces. Until next week Dublin Fringe Festival has 10 bright-pink shipping containers scattered about the city for its Sited art exhibition. Mark Garry, its curator, says the robustness of the containers - the kind normally carried around by HGVs - was part of their appeal. "We learned a lesson from the likes of CowParade and chose the containers because we knew that whatever happened to the outside of them wouldn't affect what was inside them."

What is our relationship with art? Are these incidents a result of a deep-rooted distrust of it or simply a by-product of an aggressive drink culture?

Gerard Beshoff, CowParade Ireland's project director, says he and his colleagues always assumed there would be some damage, whether intentional or not. "It would have been naive to think that they would have remained blemish-free for the entire duration," he says, pointing out that one cow was cracked when a tourist sat on it to get a better photograph. He was also aware of problems in Britain, where the horns were ripped from a cow in its parade.

But he was amazed by the extent of the vandalism that awaited the animals in Dublin. "What got to me was that we only put 10 cows out at first, and all 10 were damaged within a couple of days. If there had been 100 cows and 10 had been damaged it wouldn't have been great, but it would have been an acceptable ratio. That they were all damaged is of serious concern. They may have had some issues with vandalism in the UK, but not to the same extent."

Like Galway Arts Festival, which commissioned Ferrer's resin pig, Beshoff is shocked at the thought of the organisation that went into damaging public art. To sever the head of a fibreglass cow meant bringing along the tools for the job.

Ireland is not alone in its problems. In Holland, Michigan, fibreglass pigs were taken off show after almost half of them were vandalised. Four flying horses were damaged in Dallas. In Highland, Indiana, six-foot fibreglass ducks were at the receiving end. "Parents who see a duck in their garage are advised to call the town immediately," said the local newspaper.

And earlier this year a group calling itself the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places threatened to destroy a controversial sculpture in Sydney. The piece, Stones In The Sky, is known locally as Poo On Stilts. In England youths burned down Birmingham's Forward sculpture after years of controversy about the resin artwork, which cost more than €250,000 when it was commissioned, in 1991.

But the extent of the problem does seem to be peculiarly Irish. Ciarán Benson, professor of psychology at University College Dublin and a former chairman of the Arts Council, believes its root is a lack of respect for public spaces. "There is a primitive, profound ignorance," he says. "It's not just about art. We could equally be talking about why it is that people destroy trees."

So attacks on public art are not so much expressions of a grudge against art as they are attacks on obvious, colourful targets in a culture that seems not to value its environment.

Benson sees examples at the lowest and highest levels. "Lots of things are allowed pass, and it means we have developed bad habits. Bouncers standing outside pubs don't stop people from vomiting or urinating if it's not within three feet of the pub's door."

John Fitzgerald, who as Dublin's city manager has been dealing with the aftermath of vandalism since 1996, also believes that the problem is one of high tolerance of low behaviour, from drug-dealing and begging to littering. And drink culture has eroded our respect for public spaces, he says. "As a society we have a problem, there's no doubt, and it extends to the whole realm of public behaviour. We have to sit down and examine our conscience."

Part of the problem may be that the pace of life has quickened. Fitzgerald points out that, like other Irish cities, Dublin has built a reputation as a place that does not shut down with the shops. "We shouldn't stop that, but it's about getting the balance right. The downside is that the levels of public behaviour are far below what is expected in other places. People get away with behaviour that they wouldn't anywhere else."

One of Fitzgerald's tactics is to respond quickly to vandalism. To dissuade the antisocial behaviour that quickly sullied the Liffey boardwalk in Dublin, for example, benches were removed and an almost permanent Garda presence introduced. Repairing damage quickly persuades vandals they are wasting their time, says Fitzgerald. Dublin City Council, which has raised €5 million in rates to tackle the problem, uses closed-circuit television to spot where it needs to send its clean-up teams. The Garda is also quietly focusing on the city centre, he says.

"It costs. We're putting far, far more resources into dealing with it than we did five years ago. But the core of the city centre is like a five-star hotel, and we need to provide the service to match that."

For Benson, part of the solution is also to change the way we think about public art, to get over what he calls a problem of imagining. "The Spire [of Dublin\] was corroded by the media from the start, when they straightaway called it the spike," he says. "It was not necessarily the man on the street. I was there as the sections were put in place, and there was a tremendous sense of excitement as people realised what it was, and generally speaking it has been a big success."

We also need to become more involved, he says, to overcome our tendency to expect the authorities to deal with vandalism for us. At the moment, he believes, we allow bad behaviour in the absence of authority. "Somebody obviously saw the cow vandalism take place, yet no one intervened."

That we are deeply distrustful of authority does not help, he says; when government does tackle social problems it is often berated as being po-faced or representing the nanny state. But there may be signs of hope. Although there are issues about how little we are exposed to art, whether at school or into adulthood, public art tends to survive pretty well outside the city centre, according to Fitzgerald. "For instance, there is public art in Sean McDermott Street now - and it is untouched."

And, to Mark Garry's surprise,Sited's shipping containers have remained almost untouched. "I was expecting lots of graffiti. In fact we took our pictures early on, so that the artists could get them for their portfolios before it was too late. But there have been no problems. Maybe it's because people in the city are already so familiar with containers."

"I don't think we should give in, and we don't," says John Fitzgerald. "A few days after the James Joyce Bridge [Santiago Calatrava's new crossing of the Liffey, near Heuston Station\] was completed there were kids climbing over it. There are people who say we shouldn't be designing world-class structures if they are only going to be destroyed, but for Dublin to be a world-class city we must have world-class things in it. If we believe the idiots should be allowed win then we wouldn't put them there, but we must control the idiocy."