Mr. Noel Waters:

I cannot disagree with what the Chairman is saying. I was struck recently by a remark the Commissioner made in the context of a discussion about the bad things that are happening in rural areas. She indicated her wish to reassure communities they were not being left alone. That is entirely the way we in the Department are approaching matters.

As my colleague said, one of the benefits of our investment in the force is that through the analysis section the Garda is able to pinpoint - I have seen this myself - and examine what might seem to others as random, unlinked events in a community. When they are all mapped onto an IT system and a trained, skilled person has the capacity to analyse that, however, it provides an entirely different picture. The Garda is doing precisely that today now that we have the resources for it to do so in tackling the type of issues the Chairman referred to. That is a big breakthrough for us and we were able to support the Garda with a resource envelope to enable it to maximise that.