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

While I recognise the points about technology, my experience from talking to the community is that they want visibility. They want to see patrols, bicycle patrols and all of that. That needs gardaí and we need to be more ambitious in the numbers of gardaí.

To move on to another issue, a case collapsed on 26 March that was taken against a Garda civilian employee, Lynn Margiotta, and her brother Tony Margiotta, who is a GP. This was at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. She had been accused of deducing and presenting fraudulent instruments in the form of sick notes in 2014. As I said, the case collapsed, but as I understand it, she was arrested, not provided with a solicitor, and her wages were stopped in 2015 and were not restored. She was arrested for a second time in September 2018. Ultimately, this case collapsed. She was sick insofar as any of the documentation of the reports that have been in the media suggest. It seems very heavy handed and excessive. Will the Commissioner comment on the case? It does not seem to have been well handled by the Garda and it seems to have been a very traumatic experience for that family. It was probably deeply unfair as well.