Mr. Anthony Gallagher:

I am a former inspector in An Garda Síochána with a total of 38 years service. I spent 20 years at inspector grade in the north central division. I am currently the events security and risk manager with Ashtree Risk Group and I am also chairman of Dubhlinn, which is a business group representing about 100 businesses in Dublin central from Parnell Square to Drumcondra.

I have a few points to raise. The first is about recruitment. It is important that An Garda Síochána should be an appealing career. The improvement in regard to the training allowance is welcome but the emphasis in relation to the training of the gardaí should be a greater road-craft type of training and the predominant portion of the training should take place at station level where there are resources and visibility and learning on the job.

The first increment of salary should commence at that point.

We are looking at retention then in relation to what has happened there. We have spent a significant amount of money recruiting and training gardaí and I wonder whether we really are putting a robust enough effort into the after-interviews or to interview them before they have that inclination to retire early or resign. That should be independently done by a HR function in order that you can get a fully understanding of the reason they are retiring.

I will speak briefly on rostering. All I will say is it is a four-by-four roster. The business community that I represent speaks a lot about the continuation of service and the ability to contact their community gardaí. The community policing service, in itself, is a special service. It is a welcome service but they need to see them for a greater period than four days.

On morale within An Garda Síochána, the front-line units should not be depleted at the expense of lateral movement to staff specialised areas. That should be only done when the workforce is sufficiently strong to facilitate that. While those specialised areas are very important, it should pause until then. Also, more civilian or Garda staff should be involved in the administrative operational areas of the job to free up members of the Garda to have more visibility on the street. They can assist in the areas of reports etc. The Garda should consider bringing back retired gardaí, who might well come back under a specialised package. They could look at areas such as serving the public hatch, creating reports etc. That has been done in the UK and was quite successful.

On the policing of Dublin city, we have approximately 100 million visitors visiting the city each year. At one point, it reached 110 million. I believe policing should follow that footfall. The resource need for the likes of the city centre stations, namely, Pearse Street and Store Street, are paramount because if we cannot police our national promenades sufficiently, that is the barometer test of the public perception of safety that people will have in relation to how we police the city.

There are four main areas of risk in the city, as I would see it, and it starts with some of the smaller areas. The first area is in relation to the panhandling and begging outside stores. There is an undertone to that because they are taking up positions outside shops, the retail staff are afraid of them and they, in turn, then become involved in shoplifting themselves. I continue to work in that area in my job experience.

As for the methadone dispensing services, while it certainly is a worthy issue, they are too intensified and focused on the city centre. The service should be dispersed out to the suburbs. All of the service should not be confined to the city centre because some of these groupings are making their way back into the city centre and are causing alarm among business owners.

What I would say about hostels is that the intensification of the hostels is predominantly in the city centre. I know of approximately 60 hostels within a short radius of the epicentre of Dublin city and there is no educational ground for people to rehabilitate in a city centre hostel. They have to go out of the hostel every single day, they are meeting up with their fellow peers at one stage and they are falling back into crime. It is not an environment where you can teach self-sufficiency.

In relation to the social housing there, the amenities for young people who live in housing flat complexes should be improved because they are gathering among their peers and descending on the city. We have seen some of the recent events in Temple Bar and other such areas.

On high-risk offenders, I know for a fact that there are about 24 or 25 recidivist-type of offenders in the city centre. They are committing a substantial amount of the crime. For example, two offenders were recently arrested with the co-operation of the Garda, which did a great job. One was found to have six warrants, the other was an habitual offender and they are obtaining bail. I think we have to look at the bail laws and the capacity of the current prison complexes to deal with them. Our population has increased by 2 million people. A proportionate percentage of that will offend. Therefore, we have to revive the Thornton Hall project as an option to increase the capacity to deal with the type of offenders.

There are longer term issues in relation to the hostels, the methadone clinics and so on but we need to have an even distribution of these facilities. The feeding is an important aspect because of the growing queues that are assembling. I am not unsympathetic to that plight but it causes a fear amongst people. They are parading for their refreshments at city centre locations and it is causing alarm.