Mr. Mark Toland:

We went to community meetings and people said they certainly noticed the loss of their community policing gardaí because they were the people who would arrange meetings and send them texts and information. Certainly in rural Ireland, there is an absence of community gardaí in many areas. We found divisions that did not have any full-time community gardaí, and some divisions in Dublin that have significant numbers.

On station closures, I recognise the symbolic presence of a Garda station in a community but as a senior police officer, one sometimes has a dilemma as to whether to keep a garda in a station, sometimes late at night, waiting for a customer to call or close the front counter service, not the station, and put the officer on patrol so they can be more proactive. It is a balance in terms of keeping the station open when it gets very few callers. My view is that a Garda station needs to have a reception area so that members of the public know they can call at certain times, but the public need a garda to come quickly when they need them in an emergency. We need to get the balance right between them. Chief superintendents in divisions are often best placed in terms of knowing the best place to locate Garda stations and the facilities they need to ensure they are accessible to the public, but also making sure they get people out from behind desks and front counters, where possible, to go out and be a visible presence.

What I found, in terms of visibility, is that gardaí often drive down my road but I do not see them. They might walk down a street but if someone is not out and about, they do not see them. We have recommended that they knock on doors and let people know they are patrolling their streets because, quite often, people do not see them when they are out on patrol. Visibility is a difficult issue. It is about the fear of crime also. Many people have a fear of crime when the reality is they are very unlikely to become a victims of crime. One tends to find that more elderly people are afraid to go out because of what they see in headline news. That visible garda presence is very reassuring to them when they see them.