Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an bhfinné as an gcur i láthair sin.

There is massive respect in the community for the work of the Garda Síochána. The Garda put themselves at risk day in, day out. The people have enormous respect for gardaí. It is impossible to overestimate the fear that exists in certain communities in regard to crime. Anybody who represents a constituency with large rural communities will know that fear exists in rural areas, especially among older people during the winter period. One reason this has happened is the closure of 139 Garda stations in rural areas. Obviously there has been a drop of approximately 3,500 in the number of gardaí in the past number of years. Even with the recruitment of new gardaí, because of the numbers retiring and those who are on career breaks and so on, there is still a small reduction in the number of active gardaí.

I will put a number of questions together and the witnesses might answer them at the end.

A question we are putting to all the stakeholders who appear before the committee is the performance indicator that shows how quickly a service can respond to a person in a rural area. The fire service appeared before us earlier today and they had plenty of statistics on their response times and they could say to us that 95% of the calls they receive are responded to within 30 minutes. Does the Garda Síochána have those specific key performance indicators? This is an important issue because obviously the further one is from an emergency service, an emergency being time sensitive, the more the service is reduced. Let me give a practical example. Ballivor is a rural village in County Meath. In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when murder rates were in the region of four or five a year, Ballivor had four gardaí. Now it has two gardaí and the town is much bigger and much more diverse. How is it practical to do more with less? If there are such cuts to Garda numbers and to stations, how can the Garda achieve the same as it would have achieved with the larger numbers? I understand that the argument is that if one puts a Garda car on the road, the garda is mobile and can still get in and out of the areas. However, while Mr. Nolan spoke at length on community engagement and all the different community engagement operations in which the Garda was involved, surely being located in a station in the community is a very important aspect of community engagement. With regard to technology, a recent report on Garda technology indicates it is about 30 years behind the time. I understand there are about 130 Garda stations that are not fully connected to the PULSE system currently, which means that some of the Garda statistics that we are hearing are not necessarily the full representation of people's experience because we have heard from the CSO that when people make a call to the Garda, there is not necessarily a process in place by which that call, that report of a crime, is recorded on PULSE. If Garda stations are not fully linked up to PULSE that will create a difficulty.

Will the witnesses talk for a couple of minutes about the morale in the force in light of the cuts and the difficulties? Gardaí who work in Border areas have told me they will not go out on their own in response to particular calls because of the dangers posed to them. Have the scandals with regard to whistleblowing and so forth had an impact on the morale and functionality of An Garda Síochána?

Is there a correlation between the impressive statistics that have been detailed and the reduction in Garda numbers? If there are fewer functioning gardaí, the capacity of the force to collect information and collate crime reports will be impeded. Will the witnesses talk to us about that?

We have been told that contingency plans involving a small group of gardaí are being put into place in advance of the industrial action that is planned for Friday. It seems that such plans will focus on city centres. At a time when there are difficulties in policing rural areas with the full complement of gardaí, what kind of contingency plans will be made for rural communities to be served by gardaí this Friday? I will bring in the rest of the members before asking the witnesses to respond.