Mr. Kevin O'Brien:

On community policing, it is clear when the community guards are missing. One has an automatic rise in anti-social behaviour but when they are present and are seen travelling around the community on their bikes, there is an automatic drop. Unfortunately, when I spoke to my local community guard about two months ago and told him I had not seen him for ages, he replied that he had been pulled off the job. That has happened several times in recent years, that is, the first person to be pulled off his or her day-to-day duty is the community garda. However, it is the community that suffers from the lack of that community garda. I appreciate serious crimes and other things are going on but we must invest in community gardaí, who are fantastic. They build relationships with the local traders, the local community and even with people who perhaps normally would be anti-social. They build a relationship and get to know such people and are able to nip it in the bud. Similarly, we may have an incident in which we have a gang of kids, especially during the school holidays, who are hanging around the gates and so on and we know they are asking people to buy alcohol. We could go out and ask them to scatter but I can assure members the answer we would get is not repeatable here today, never mind the threats we also would receive. However, with a community garda we can ring the station to say we need Garda such and such, if he is around, to pass by and assist us to scatter these guys. They are under-appreciated.