Dr. Johnny Connolly:

I will deal with the question on community first. We touched on the matter in the sense that the commission is talking about a district policing model where everyone is involved in community policing and outward looking. We have gone into great detail on that. We had a chat about whether there should be a community policing unit. On the basis that we do not know the demand being place on gardaí locally and because there is no clear workforce plan, we did not present figures for community policing. We were reluctant to do so because, whereas community gardaí account for approximately 10% of the force, we do not want the issue to be put to the side as if it is irrelevant.

We also have a chapter on digital innovation and social media. One of the things that we have called for is for mobile Apps to be made available to front-line gardaí and for the Garda to ratchet up its social media profile because, in this day and age, there is no reason people should not know their local garda. There should be regular contact and there are mobile Apps that can facilitate that. We went into that in some detail in the report.