Seán Kenny (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the members of the Garda Inspectorate to the committee and I apologise for not being here earlier to hear their presentation.

I have a general question regarding whether the report has considered the role and deployment of the Garda traffic corps. I get quite a lot of complaints from constituents on this issue. Gridlock is back in Dublin city and it is sometimes quite severe. A couple of weeks ago, a traffic accident occurred on the M50 and the entire M50 and the north side of the city were in gridlock for a couple of hours. I was coming into the city that morning and at Fairview, where there is a junction of three roads, the traffic was stopped and motorists were trying to drive through red lights and yellow boxes. There was mayhem but there was not a garda to be seen anywhere. In situations like that, somebody is needed on the ground to stop people from behaving in this manner. It would be expected in such situations that one or two gardaí would be at that junction.

This is not the only sort of complaint I have heard. I have heard complaints about traffic congestion and parking and so on. We have others, not just the Garda traffic corps, to deal with these issues. Dublin City Council has a traffic management policy and Dublin Bus has its own cameras, but these are mainly interested in bus movement. Has the Garda Inspectorate considered the issue of general traffic management and its regulation? What is the Garda's role in that?