Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for making time available today to consider my request for a Supplementary Estimate for the Garda Síochána and Justice and Equality Votes.

There are five Votes within the justice group which, to ensure the effective management of resources for the entire justice sector, are treated as a single group. Therefore, while there is a requirement for additional funding for the Garda Vote of €50.994 million and a provision of almost €5 million needs to be made within the Justice and Equality Vote to fund initial payments to the women who were admitted to and worked in the Magdalen Laundries, a significant proportion of the additional requirement can be funded by savings in other areas within the Vote group. Thus, of the additional €51 million required for the Garda Vote and €5 million for the Magdalen related payments in the justice Vote, almost €24 million is available from elsewhere within the Vote group, leaving the total external funding required by the justice group at just over €32 million.

The offsetting savings to reduce the external funding requirements are primarily in the Justice and Equality Vote, at least €17 million, prisons at €5 million, and a combined surrender balance of more than €1.5 million in the Courts Service and Property Registration Authority Votes. This leaves the net Supplementary Estimate requirement for the justice Vote group at €32 million, some 1.4% of the total justice Vote group gross allocation, not €51 million, a fact conveniently overlooked when the Fianna Fáil spokesperson took to the airwaves earlier this week.

The Deputy also failed to mention that a Supplementary Estimate requirement is neither unusual nor unexpected in a financial allocation that is as broad and diverse as the justice Vote group, nor is it unusual that savings in one Vote within the group are reallocated to offset costs in another. I will give some examples of how this has occurred on previous occasions. In 2007, when Deputy Niall Collins's party was in Government, the Supplementary Estimate requirement for the justice Vote group was €67 million, of which €25 million was needed for the Garda Vote. This was partly offset by a €12 million underspend elsewhere in the Vote group leaving a requirement for external funding of €55 million. In 2009, €30 million was needed to supplement the Garda Vote and this was partly offset by a €15 million underspend in other Votes. In 2010, €40 million was moved within the Garda Vote to meet an additional requirement in payroll costs.

Is Deputy Collins suggesting that in 2013 something unusual is occurring or that we should not pay members of the Garda Síochána? It seemed to me, as I listened to the Deputy, that he was disappointed we have maintained Garda numbers at in excess of 13,000 and that the Garda has been extraordinarily successful during the course of the year in the duties members of the force have undertaken.

It has been interesting to note some of the media coverage in relation to this year's justice Vote group requirement for a Supplementary Estimate for the Garda Vote. On the one hand, there has been a suggestion that the Garda Síochána is under-resourced and gardaí have been rendered incapable of doing their job properly. On the other hand, some of the same media commentators and writers have rightly given extensive coverage of hugely successful Garda operations and seizures which have resulted in a myriad of headlines and some praise for the Garda Síochána. I will outline some examples.

Earlier this month, 89 people were arrested in a 24 hour period under Operation Wireless. It followed more than 400 planned searches throughout the country in relation to robbery, burglary, theft, handling stolen property, possession of drugs and firearms offences.

There was a co-ordinated drive against those involved in burglaries under Operation Fiacla to which I have referred frequently during the last 12 months. The latest Central Statistics Office figures show that burglary offences decreased by 8.9%, continuing the trend observed since the introduction of the operation. That means there has been an annual reduction of 8.9%. As Deputies will know, Operation Fiacla is intelligence driven and specific burglary initiatives have been implemented in each Garda region to target suspect offenders. As of 31 October, 6,972 persons have been arrested, something I hope members of the committee welcome, and 3,971 persons have been charged with burglary offences under Operation Fiacla.

Operation Nitrogen continues to be very successful in identifying and dismantling cannabis cultivation sites across all areas of the country. Seizures of cannabis plants valued at in excess of €16 million were recorded for the first three quarters of 2013. Deputies will be familiar with the frequent reports of the Garda successfully identifying grow houses in various parts of the country. A very significant seizure of plants worth an estimated €2 million was made on 21 October at cannabis cultivation sites in counties Kerry, Roscommon and Cavan.

Operation Stilts is an ongoing overt Garda operation targeting anti-social behaviour and drug related crimes in Dublin city centre locations. It has been continuing and has proved successful.

Just this week, on 18 November, a major production facility was detected in Waterford which had the capacity to launder approximately 10 million litres of fuel per annum with a potential loss to the Exchequer of approximately €5 million per annum. A number of large tanks and ancillary equipment were seized and the laundering plant was dismantled. Investigations into the fuel laundry operation are continuing.

The members of the committee and the public can rest assured that the Garda Síochána continues to rise to the many challenges facing the organisation daily. Operational decisions taken by the Garda Commissioner and those working with him have resulted in the targeting of criminal gangs and those involved in subversive activities, with the result that many have been convicted and sentenced before our courts and are in jail. The most recently published CSO crime statistics detailed a reduction in criminal offences in 12 of the 14 crime groups, with an overall 8% reduction in the incidence of crime in the 12 months to mid-2013. These statistics underline the positive impact the Garda is having on crime and the success of the Commissioner's strategy to maximise the use of resources, something of great importance, with intelligent and targeted deployment which is clearly working.

With regard to Deputy Collins, in his enthusiasm to make some political point on the national airwaves, he appears to have conveniently forgotten that the Fianna Fáil-led Government’s National Recovery Plan 2011-2014, published on 24 November 2010, contained expenditure ceilings for the justice sector which would have made it impossible for the Garda Síochána and other areas of the justice sector to operate effectively. In fact, it is a racing certainty that had the Fianna Fáil figures been applied, we would in all probability have faced a situation where Garda numbers might have dropped to 11,500 rather than the 13,000 overall figure that the current Government has set as its objective target strength for the force.

It is, once again, grossly hypocritical of Fianna Fáil to be criticising the Government over Garda numbers, calling for increases and shouting the odds over seeking a Supplementary Estimate to make available the funding necessary to maintain Garda services, when their own plan would have almost certainly have ensured Garda numbers would have had to drop to unacceptably low levels, or alternatively a massive supplementary budget would have been required to bridge the gap. Fortunately, I have managed to ensure the current expenditure ceilings are much healthier for the group, by more than €400 million for the three years 2012 to 2014, inclusive, when compared with the previous government’s provision. In 2013, for example, the current expenditure ceiling proposed under the previous Government’s national recovery plan was €2.009 billion. The actual current expenditure allocation per the Revised Estimates Volume was €2.163 billion, an increase of €154 million. In real terms, the likelihood is that had the previous Government’s expenditure ceiling remained in place, the committee would have been discussing a Supplementary Estimate requirement of €154 million plus €32 million, which amounts to €186 million across the Vote group, rather than the amount of just over €32 million required in the current year. That is a sum substantially less than that sought on some occasions in the past by my predecessors who were Fianna Fáil appointed Ministers for the justice area.

Leaving aside the figures for a moment and returning to the contention from some quarters that a budgetary shortfall in some way inhibited members of the Garda Síochána in their work, I would like to say the following.

My position on this matter has been crystal clear from the beginning of the year. I said that the funding required for Garda payroll and other essential requirements would be available, and this is case. It seems the objection of Deputy Niall Collins is that the Garda payroll funds are available and that what I promised has been proved to be correct. The process we are undertaking today is evidence of this. It is worth pointing out again that a Supplementary Estimate in the case of the Garda Vote is not an unusual occurrence, nor is it unique to my period as Minister for Justice and Equality.

By far the largest Vote within the Group is the Garda Síochána Vote, which accounts for some 63% of current expenditure. Almost 90% of expenditure in the Garda Síochána Vote is accounted for by payroll and pension costs. It is, therefore, almost inevitable, in the context of a Supplementary Estimate for the Garda Vote, that a proportion of this will involve either pay or pensions. The fact that there are potentially more than 1,200 Garda members with the required service who could exercise an option to retire on age grounds means that Garda payroll costs are something of an imprecise science. The fact that we have so many who could potentially retire has been used in previous years to suggest they would all retire in one year and Garda numbers would be dramatically reduced. That was not the case last year or this year but it is not possible to predict with absolute accuracy the numbers who will retire or continue.

This notwithstanding, the reality is that the Commissioner has 13,137 members of An Garda Síochána, as of the end of October, plus 1,129 Garda reserve members available to him to provide a policing service. An additional 187 men and women are in training for the Garda reserve. More than 2,000 civilian staff provide essential support services in An Garda Síochána. In addition, civilian personnel have been redeployed from elsewhere within the public sector to meet urgent needs within An Garda Síochána in areas such as the Garda vetting unit with the aim of reducing processing times in this very important area.

There are other factors contributing to the total payroll costs, including the overtime and allowance costs associated with the G8 Summit in June. However, I would point out that a separate once-off allocation of €10 million was provided in the current year to meet additional costs associated with the security arrangements for Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union and the OSCE conference held in Dublin in December 2012. As with all major Garda operations, security requirements were kept under constant review by Garda management, with the result that a significant saving of approximately €6.4 million emerged from this allocation which was used to offset the G8 and other costs, including payroll.

It is important to note that a significant element of any Supplementary Estimate is the technical rebalancing of allocations between subheads approaching year end. The under-spend I have alluded to in the in the EU Presidency and OSCE subhead is an example of this. It is also important to point out that the additional payroll costs have yielded significantly more than the budgeted pension contributions and this has provided almost €7 million in additional appropriation-in-aid receipts to balance the additional payroll costs.

Like all areas of the public sector, An Garda Síochána has taken its share of reductions over recent years. An obvious manifestation of this has been the moratorium on recruitment, with the last recruits entering Templemore in 2009. I am particularly pleased that the situation is to change during 2014, with a new recruitment campaign due to commence within the next few weeks. I am also pleased that I was recently able to announce, in the context of the recent Estimates for 2014, that the targeted objective strength of An Garda Síochána will be maintained at 13,000 members. I expect that in the first week in December, formal advertisements seeking applicants for recruitment to the Garda Síochána will be published.

The total available spend on the Garda fleet in the period 2012 to 2014 is €18 million. Out of this allocation, 651 vehicles have been purchased in the 2012 to 2013 period, with an amount of €4 million available for the fleet in 2014. The corresponding figure for the previous three year period 2009 to 2011 under the previous Administration's Estimate was less than €5 million, with 217 vehicles purchased. There has been a substantial and dramatic increase in the funding available for the purchase of Garda vehicles during my time in office.

A technical adjustment is required within the Garda Vote to offset receipts from certain fixed charge notices arising from the operation of the Go Safe road safety camera contract against the outsourced cost of providing this service. The key objective of this road safety initiative is to reduce road deaths and bring about improvements in driver behaviour. I am pleased to say that all the evidence points to the success of this measure.

A technical Supplementary Estimate is required in the Justice and Equality Vote, with additional budgetary requirements offset by savings and reprioritisation of expenditure from elsewhere within the Vote. Almost all of the areas that require additional provision within the Justice and Equality Vote in 2013 are within programme C, which is to facilitate the provision and administration of justice. The programme covers areas such as criminal and civil legal aid, the Forensic Science Laboratory and the commissions and special inquiries subhead.

It is proposed, by way of technical Supplementary Estimate, to increase by €1.1 million the grant-in-aid provision available to the Legal Aid Board in 2013. The requirement is attributable directly to additional responsibilities taken on by the Legal Aid Board in relation to legal aid custody issues and other ad hoclegal aid schemes. In addition, through its refugee legal service, the Legal Aid Board is providing appropriate legal representation to applicants making their cases for subsidiary protection. The additional requirement in this case arises from new regulations which provide for applicants to be interviewed as part of the first instance investigation of their subsidiary protection application. Moreover, in the event of a negative recommendation following the first instance investigation of their case, they will have the opportunity to appeal.

While the cost of criminal legal aid has reduced in recent years due to the introduction of a number of cost-reducing measures, including reductions in legal fees, an additional provision of up to €3 million will be required in 2013. The total expenditure is expected to be in the region of €50.5 million, which is on a par with 2012 and significantly less than the two previous years, when expenditure exceeded €56 million per annum. A significant increase of €7.3 million is also required in respect of the payment of awards made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal. This subhead is cash limited and the only mechanism available for increasing the funding in the subhead is through the Supplementary Estimate process.

The value of accepted awards by applicants now stands at approximately €7.3 million in excess of the available funds in the subhead. This excess is largely due to a number of significant awards of compensation that have been made in recent years and have placed great financial strain on the scheme. Various administrative arrangements are in place to ensure the scheme stays within the available budget, including a financial limit of €250,000 on the amount that can be paid in any individual case in a particular year. This means that, in the case of the larger awards, it may take the State several years to pay the award. It is considered prudent at this stage to discharge the outstanding accepted awards in full, which gives rise to the requirement for a technical Supplementary Estimate.

I am considering detailed proposals in relation to the overhaul of this scheme which are likely to include placing it on a statutory basis, more streamlined administrative arrangements, and other revisions necessary to being the scheme into line with modern governance practices and financial procedures. The details of any revised scheme will be published in due course, but various issues require further clarification and discussion with relevant parties before a reformed scheme is put in place.

I am pleased that the work of my Department and the interdepartmental group established to examine the implementation of the recommendations in the Mr. Justice Quirke report will shortly mean that lump sum ex gratiapayments will be made in respect of a number of the applications from women who were admitted to and worked in Magdalen laundries. While I have at all times been keen to simplify the application process as much as possible, there were still a number of important steps and processes to be gone through. In addition, it has also been necessary to establish the additional benefits, whether through the social welfare system or the health system, to which these women may be entitled. This will enable the women to make an informed decision regarding any offer from the State.

We are at the stage where offers will be made in some cases very shortly. In fact, I know that letters have issued in the last 24 hours to some of the women concerned. Therefore it is considered prudent to provide for payments to the women in a proportion of these cases prior to the end of this year. It is likely, however, that the bulk of the payments will be made in 2014, and sufficient budgetary provision will be made by the Government in 2014 for this.

There are a number of relatively small savings within the subheads in programme C. This programme also includes the Commissions and Special Inquiries subhead, which has a saving of €2.5 million. The cost of the recent Court of Appeal referendum is also being met from this subhead. The bulk of the funding for these costs comes from surplus appropriation-in-aid receipts arising mainly from the measures I have taken since my appointment as Minister for Justice and Equality to clear the backlog in citizenship applications.

The savings to assist in offsetting the additional requirement in the Garda Vote will be reflected in surrender balances in the other Votes in the group. Leaving aside the additional €4.9 million for the Magdalen-related payments and costs, which was always going to be funded from outside the Vote group, the Justice Vote will have a surrender balance of at least €17 million to offset the cost of the Garda supplementary. The savings in question arise across a range of areas, including various administrative subheads and other subheads such as INIS and asylum seeker accommodation.

The Prison Service will have a saving of €5 million in capital expenditure, due mainly to some payments for work on Cork and Limerick Prisons arising in 2014 rather than 2013, as originally envisaged. This is being used to directly offset the additional investment in the Garda transport fleet. There are relatively small savings in the Courts Service and Property Registration Authority Votes, which will form a cumulative surrender balance of approximately €1.5 million in respect of these Votes.

This is effectively the background to the Supplementary Estimates before this committee today. I am sure the committee members appreciate the varied range of issues impacting on the justice sector, which makes it absolutely essential to have the flexibility to utilise savings in one area, irrespective of the Vote to which it belongs, to offset costs in others. This is a formula that has been adopted in the past. It is important to remind Deputies that the changes relate to only 1.4% of the overall Estimate provisions for the justice sector, which amounts in total to almost €2.2 billion. On that note, I recommend the Supplementary Estimate for the Garda Síochána and Justice and Equality Votes to the committee and I am happy to discuss any issues that arise.