Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Dr. Connolly for attending. I was anxious that this issue would be addressed. I am a big fan of the community policing model where it operates properly. In my experience it has made a big difference in some of the communities I represent, which have had some excellent community gardaí. It is an issue that has been neglected, however. I tabled a number of parliamentary questions on community policing earlier this year. The number of dedicated community gardaí around the country is down by 40%, but in some areas it is down by 94%, such as in Donegal. Some of that might be due to a number of chief superintendents being in a better position to defend their resources and retain personnel. I expect that there was a significant fall in every district and a catastrophic fall in some.

My first questions are for Dr. Connolly but I would like to hear others' views also. The questions reflect what is in the Commission on the Future of Policing document. Part of me wonders if it is an issue of language. Community policing sounds vague unless one has met a designated community garda and had a sense of what a community garda does. In a sense, one expects that every garda is a community garda, which is true up to a point. My concern, however, is with the attitude taken from a policy point of view that every garda should be considered a community garda. While every garda should be community-orientated and the attitude of those who are parts of core units should be in co-operation with the gardaí, there is a difficulty if there is not a dedicated community garda for a subdistrict or several community gardaí across a district. The certainty of the role is not there. There is a general principle that community policing is important, but when there is a spike in crime or when public order issues must be addressed in a district, people are redirected away from this work.

As our guests have all indicated, a huge function of community policing is in crime prevention and building relationships as opposed to crime-solving. I am open-minded but my initial view is that there needs to be a core of people who are specifically and primarily responsible for community policing in a dedicated way. While they are assisted in a general sense by other core unit gardaí, it is their primary responsibility and the people in the locality know whom to ring if they want access to the community bus or if they want to organise some sort of a public meeting about a public order issue. There should be a specific contact person who is known to people.

There are two districts in my constituency and, in the one closer to where I am from, we have had a series of excellent community gardaí. This allowed relationships and trust to be built up, particularly with younger people. While other gardaí might have been known, the community garda was known first and foremost. I would like to hear Dr. Connolly's observations on that but I invite anyone else to comment also. We could allow for every garda to be a community garda, covering a multitude, yet it might never really cut to the core of focused, dedicated development of relationships and dedicated community policing. More broadly, does Dr. Connolly believe that community policing has been adequately resourced by Garda management in recent years?

There has not been a great deal of use of the restorative justice model in this jurisdiction. The model has been used more in Britain, the North and other jurisdictions. Do we need to see more of that and who is responsible for handling it?

On local accountability mechanisms, my experience is that the LCPFs, which are quite ad hocin nature, are far more effective, and I expressed that in my submission to the commission. I accept that JPCs vary hugely, but I attend meetings of Cork county JPCs as well as Cork city JPCs. There is a population of 400,000 but the JPCs are trying to deal with things on a thematic basis and, therefore, all that happens is that crime statistics are read out to people and questions are answered. There is no setting of priorities. Policing plans are formally presented but they are so general and so broad-based that, ultimately, public representatives and community representatives do not have enough of a feel of the county as a whole to properly get their teeth into what is involved. It needs to be much more localised, which is why the LCPFs generally work well, although they are very localised. My understanding of what will be put forward by the commission is that both would be retained, although I am not sure I understand the division of labour that is envisioned in the proposal. What would be the job of the JPCs, if they are to be retained, in the event that more emphasis is put on LCPFs? In the North policing and community safety partnerships, PCSPs, are a fair bit more robust. Was that model explored at all?