Mr. Pat Leahy:

The Deputy has raised a really interesting point. Unfortunately when one determines that everybody in the district is a community garda, that has been the greatest escape hatch for the traditional model since policing began where everybody is a community garda but nobody is.

That is not what the commission had in mind. I engaged with members of the commission before this meeting, including Johnny Connolly, and I have had discussions to try to find out what exactly they had in mind. They come out in the commission report and say there is a stratified set of qualities and skills required, and that these will differ. While they highlight that, the Deputy is right, however, that we need to know what the dedicated community garda actually is. The first responders will have a different skill set but they must have a community policing ethos, so there is a certain level of training they must undergo. Similarly, detectives in drugs units must all be indoctrinated into the ethos of being community-centric. A certain skill set is required for that foundation community policing cohort.

We are suggesting that a community garda is determined to be such if he or she is spending 60% or more of his or her time dedicated to community policing. We all know that, for a major protest or major event, it is all shoulders to the wheel in policing. That is the nature of the game. It is what the public would expect and what we ourselves expect. This is the definition we are proposing, namely, they would spend 60% or more of their time dedicated to problem-solving in the community and they would be associated with a particular well-defined area so that everyone in the area would know this was the community garda and that this was the person to call when in trouble.

To manage a situation like that nationally or even on a district basis, there must be a hub and someone must the conductor of all of this. That is why we are suggesting there will be a divisional community policing office that manages all of the data around this and tasks, for example, Pat Leahy, the community garda on the ground, because Mrs. Murphy is saying she has an issue. She is now Pat Leahy's constituent, and he is responsible for minding that person and making sure the problem is solved. If the garda needs to leverage resources to come in and assist, such as a detective unit, a drugs unit or a traffic unit, the system should facilitate that very effectively.

That is probably what is most appropriate in this respect. It is a concept that has created a conversation around this because it has in the past presented the escape hatch for policing to say they are there already and no change is required. I can be categorical, from talking to members of the commission, that that is not what they have in mind. They have a paradigm shift in mind in that we need to go back to the drawing board and reconstitute our approach to community policing. They are unambiguous and very strong about that.