Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to go back to the point of the appetite of the Garda to try to give more support to the witnesses vis-à-visthe Belfast initiative, which was discussed earlier. I understand that the PULSE IT system is presently undergoing a major upgrade. I presume this is because it has not been upgraded in more than 20 years. If we are doing this business watch scheme, there is an opportunity to ask the Garda to try to get some kind of a feed-in system from retailers where they could interact with the PULSE system. An arresting garda might see five pieces of private CCTV in relation to five different arrests and cautions previously. That is the kind of dashboard we need to start trying to get to. It is clear that we have a number of problems and the witnesses have highlighted them themselves. A youth who is constantly in trouble with the Garda will end up getting cautioned 25 times and have 20 charges before being brought up in court. The youth will then get some kind of pretty small misdemeanour, will be out with a suspended sentence for six months and will be back in operations again. We need to do something that highlights the real impact of this. It is not just about the profits of shopkeepers or the viability of their businesses. It is also about the impact on the people working there and the cumulative social degeneration it leads to. We need to do something. This committee should interlink with the Department of Justice to see if something like this could be done.