Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I will respond to his last comment first. I thank him for his sympathy and condolences and I will certainly ensure they are passed on. The testament to the men and women of An Garda Síochána and the work they do all the time, particularly in recent months, bearing in mind that members of the force were being criticised every day for much of the work that they tirelessly do, is that they continue to manage and maintain their focus. All our members are out 24-7, 365 days a year ensuring that they implement all the new initiatives around victims and show their commitment to the cultural renewal we spoke about earlier and ensuring they engage in the community in a very meaningful way. That is a testament to all the men and women of An Garda Síochána and all the civilian people who support us that the confidence in An Garda Síochána has changed in that short space of time. That does not mean that we are complacent about it. What we want to do is build on that. I thank the Deputy and his colleagues for their positive comments because it means a lot to all our people.

Operation Thor is a very thought-out intelligence-led operation. There are a number of strands to it and first and foremost the focus has been on preventing crime from happening in the first place. Operations such as this are resource intensive. The money invested has given us more than 100,000 additional patrolling hours. That means that our people can be visible in communities throughout the length and breadth of the country. It is early days in the operation and the indications are early but in the past ten days alone, there have been more than 30 arrests. Some of those have been in areas such as Donegal, Carrickmacross, in various areas in the southern region and in Dublin. Very significant interventions and disruptions in terms of crime prevention have been made and significant amounts of property have been recovered. To answer the Deputy's question, I am confident it will be an effective operation. It is multi-stranded. Next week we will start our awareness and education campaign by putting messages out online and through various media outlets on raising awareness about what we can do and working in co-operation and collaboration with the community. These are simple crime prevention initiatives that will help people, particularly coming into the darker nights.

We will see success with this. We have had some significant interventions, albeit very early. We will monitor it very closely.

We are very conscious of the night-time economy. Senator Bacik asked about the mountain bikes, and these prove very useful for policing the night-time economy in some urban centres, as the Senator just mentioned. One of the big difficulties with policing the night-time economy is that it is very resource-intensive. Improvements in the economy are very positive, but they also means challenges in terms of policing because people are socialising more. One of the difficulties for us is that it is very complex, and, no more than the drugs issue about which we spoke earlier, it is a health and social policy issue. People drink before coming out to socialise. Younger men and women partake in in-house drinking before they go out, so sometimes our members encounter people who are intoxicated before they even go out for their night out. We are very focused on measures such as checkpoints, which were mentioned. It is not so much to try to catch people but to create awareness about safe road use and ensuring people are responsible in their behaviour. We want to extend this to people being responsible in their behaviour in social interactions. The use of alcohol is one of our concerns. In-house drinking and the volume of alcohol consumed before people go out in public and to nightclubs is very difficult to police.

With regard to the closure of Garda stations, the issue is having people to engage with the community. Operation Thor will be very beneficial to us in this regard. It is focused on high-visibility and high-impact engagement with the community, working in partnership with the community and creating awareness of how we can work together, particularly in conjunction with schemes such as neighbourhood watch and community alert, as well as the IFA and Muintir na Tíre, and creating social cohesion.