Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for sharing time with me. I could stand here and talk about all the things that are wrong with the resourcing and allocation of funding in the justice system, but that would only be repeating what everyone else has said. It is true though. We have gone from a force that was probably 14,000 strong with a certain budget to 12,000 and with depleting moneys being invested, morale on the floor and new recruits being paid less than their counterparts. All that needs to be addressed.

For now though I wish to highlight the high spots of the Garda. Given everything the force has gone through during the past five years, it has done a tremendous job. Here is testament to the fact. People refer to burglary being on the increase and rural crime being affected, but the statistics do not match how people feel. The statistics, particularly in my county, show that burglaries and crime related to burglaries are down year on year in recent years. I pay tribute to the people responsible in my neck of the woods and nationally because they are punching so far above their weight given the resources they get and the financing put in to the justice system.

The reopening of the Garda college in Templemore is welcome and it is great that we are recruiting again. I acknowledge that the numbers we are recruiting at the moment are not replacing the people who have retired in recent years or who are due to retire. Effectively, we need to double recruitment to get back to 14,000 people or 15,000 people in the coming years. These levels would be welcome. Let us consider the number of people who applied for the new recruit positions in recent years. The recruitment was quite oversubscribed. Clearly people wanted to be in our police force. They are proud of the job and proud of the badge they carry and the safety they provide to everyone.

It is not only about training new recruits. The absence of training for people who are already in the Garda needs to be addressed. Our sergeants are being asked to train on the job and learn from other sergeants. Fundamentally, it is not fair to the people. We need to acknowledge the need for serious reinvestment in our force, in the people we have currently and the people we are going to recruit. We need to train these people to be able to provide us with the blanket of security we so desperately need.

For me, local crime exists. There is a major issue in one of the towns in my area - I will not mention the name - where people are actually scared. We are getting CCTV on the main street. We have had arson attacks that belie the idea of the normal leafy suburbs of County Meath. I had thought gangland crime was something that happened in large cities but it came to my home village some weeks ago. A gentleman was shot when he was sitting in his car. The kind of crime we thought only affected other people is being brought into normal people's lives. Cars have been burned out and things that do not happen in leafy rural Ireland are happening now.

Unless we seriously equip the Garda there will be problems. I realise it comes down to money. Let us consider the results the Garda got in recent weeks when we put some €5 million into extra time and overtime. If we do not survey the relevant people 24 hours per day, seven days per week, they will give us the slip at 2 a.m. and then we have to start looking for them all over again. We know who these criminals are. They need to be surveyed 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The resources and the money need to be put in. Intelligence-led policing works. We know it works and we need to resource it properly.

I wish to discuss rural crime and our hotspots. There is a great deal of talk about closing rural Garda stations and the impact this is having. In the main, the Garda stations that have been closed were only open for two hours or three hours every day to facilitate the signing of passport forms or other documentation requiring engagement with the local Garda. Instead of arguing to reopen Garda stations, I appeal to people not to be populist for once and to acknowledge and recognise that we need to go back to the beat on the street, gardaí on bicycles, and the community-led policing force that has worked but which has been depleted in recent years. We should be discussing the presence on the ground. People will feel more secure if they see the garda in their village as opposed to knowing that the Garda station, which is only bricks and mortar, up the road is unmanned or closed. That view does nothing for anyone. We need to accelerate our Garda recruitment programme and train and resource our gardaí. Then we will be as proud as we have always been of the gardaí who serve and provide the blanket of security for us to be able to live normal everyday lives in safety, and rightly so.

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