James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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7. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of Gardaí in each district in the Cork East constituency; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38186/24]

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I raise the important issue of Garda resources and numbers in my constituency. I ask the Minister of State to set out the number of gardaí in each district in the Cork East constituency and if to make statement on the matter. I raise this issue because we have seen a substantial decline in the number of gardaí in my constituency. According to our latest available figures, we are down now to under 100, coming from having 109 in 2020. I wish to raise this issue with the Minister of State and see what can be done to address it.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy O'Connor for raising the very important matter of the number of gardaí in each district in the Cork East constituency. Everyone deserves to be safe and feel safe in their own communities, and of course having a visible Garda presence in the community is an important part of that. Everyone deserves to have that sense of safety.

The unprecedented allocation of over €2 billion for 2023 and €2.35 billion for 2024 to An Garda Síochána demonstrates the Government's commitment to ensuring An Garda Síochána has provision to recruit the personnel it needs to carry out its vital policing work. This funding allows for the continued recruitment of Garda members and staff. The Government is taking several steps to accelerate recruitment into An Garda Síochána, including almost doubling the garda training allowance, increasing the age of entry from 35 to 50, increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 and launching a new Garda Reserve competition. There are currently over 14,000 Garda members across the country, compared with 12,816 in 2015. This is an increase of around 9%.

The introduction of a new Garda operating model, which has already been rolled out in Cork, will provide more front-line gardaí, increased Garda visibility and a wider range of policing services for people in their local areas. It will divide service delivery within the division into four functional areas, one of the most important areas being community engagement. This will allow for a greater and more consistent focus on community policing in all divisions.

While the Garda Commissioner is responsible for the deployment of Garda members throughout the State, I am assured that Garda management keeps the distribution of resources under continual review in the context of policing priorities and crime trends. I can inform the Deputy that as of the end of June 2024, there were 667 gardaí in Cork city, 322 in Cork north, and 280 in Cork west. The Deputy will also be interested to note that the 322 gardaí allocated to Cork north, which covers most of the Cork East constituency area, shows an increase of over 8% since 2015.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for that information. Above all else, I am here to represent the people of Cork East and it is an honour to do so. It is a constituency that is growing incredibly quickly. A sign of this was the latest census and constituency boundary review. More than 20,000 electors have been moved to different constituencies and this just gives an idea of the scale of the growth in the area.

I am raising this issue because when I speak to constituents, especially around the issue of rural crime, including crime in agriculture and robberies involving expensive construction equipment and individual homes, they tell me it is something they want to see addressed.

People want to see visibility when it comes to policing. We are very lucky in our constituency and I thank our local gardaí for the enormously positive work they do in our community, day in, day out, night and day. We also have to acknowledge the issue of resourcing given the number of people in the area. This is something I am concerned about. It needs to be addressed and called out. There are other issues I will refer to at a different stage. The drop in numbers since 2020 is a concern because the population has come up by so much. This is something the Minister for Justice needs to focus on.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Again I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter of the number of gardaí. There is a significant increase in the number of Garda trainees going through Templemore to address the challenge around Garda numbers. On rural community safety, we have the rural safety forum, which has established the rural safety plan, published in 2022, which we are now working to update. It is an extensive forum with members from right across rural communities. Only yesterday I met Alice Doyle, deputy president of the IFA, and Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman, to see how we can take the rural safety forum to the next level to ensure the issues around safety in rural Ireland are being addressed. I do agree that visibility is crucial. That is why we are increasing the number of gardaí being recruited.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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While I am on my feet discussing this issue, it is important also to discuss morale within An Garda Síochána. I speak to many people around my own age - I am 27 years of age - who have come through the Garda training college and are going into the force. Another issue that is important in rural Ireland is garda transfers. Many members of An Garda Síochána come to me confidentially to try to get some advice and help. They feel that is the wrong thing to do, that it is a mistake and an error. There is a culture of fear among more junior members of An Garda Síochána when it comes to trying to get these issues addressed.

I accept that it is a 26-county force, but it is taking too long for An Garda Síochána to process transfers, particularly when gardaí want to return, not to their own home, but to regions that are adjacent to their own administrative areas within the force. This could really help boost retention in An Garda Síochána. It is no secret that this is potentially at crisis point, given the situation going on with investigations into the work that gardaí do. It needs to be addressed by the Minister.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Before the Minister of State comes back in, there are numerous other Deputies wishing to contribute. I ask them to be brief because there are Members here waiting for their questions to be taken.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I commend Deputy O'Connor for his very important question. He mentioned that the situation could be at crisis point. I would say that in many corners of Ireland, it already is. I can tell the Minister of State, following contact I have had from the Garda representative organisation, that there is a functional policing area, I will not say where, that straddles two counties and covers a population of 50,000 people. It had two gardaí on duty on Wednesday night of last week, just two gardaí in the entire area going around in one patrol car. That is crisis point. When I come to Dáil Éireann I often chat with gardaí on the street. They are from Deputy O'Connor's and my constituency. When Taylor Swift or some big event is on in Dublin, they are all drafted up to backfill rosters here in Dublin. That is crisis point. We have to speak up unapologetically for rural counties which could also become the soft belly of crime in Ireland, if some of them are not already. I would love to hear more detail on what we do to backfill those rosters in rural Ireland. They are being hollowed out to fill the policing roster in Dublin.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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The senior Minister will be well familiar with the fact that my county has the lowest number of gardaí per head of population. It is not just the lowest number but the lowest by far. The difference between the lowest and the highest is double, so there are twice as many gardaí per head of population in Waterford at the top of the list as there is in Meath at the bottom of the list. That is not fair, reasonable or equitable by any measure. What is the Minister of State doing to address it? Does he recognise it as an iniquity or inequality? Is he going to talk to the Garda Commissioner about the resource allocation model, how many recruits are coming out of Templemore and where they are going? It is a real unfairness within the system that needs to be addressed.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Would the Minister of State agree with me that a lot of Garda time is spent on bureaucracy, behind computers, filling out forms, writing reports and so on when they should be on the beat? There is serious frustration there because of that. Have any studies been carried out in respect of this and can anything be done to alleviate the issue?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputies will be fully aware, the Garda Commissioner is independent in terms of deployment of members of An Garda Síochána right across the country, and deploys them where he feels they are best deployed. Garda transfers, again, are an internal matter for the Garda Commissioner and An Garda Síochána. On what Deputy Stanton has raised, I fully agree with him. That is why we are working very hard to get Garda time freed up to focus on front-line work. There has been significant recruitment of civilian staff to free up gardaí. Some of that work will have been done under the Deputy's time as a Minister of State in the Department of Justice. The force is also using more modern technology to reduce garda time spent on administrative work and allow them to focus on dealing with front-line issues. An awful lot of that technology is being rolled out in An Garda Síochána across the country.