Mr. Brendan O'Connor:

We absolutely share the view that community policing has a massive impact within communities. We are talking about the sort of crime that really impacts on quality of life, such as antisocial behaviour and that type of thing. On rostering and making personnel available, the first point is that the adoption of the GRA proposal on rosters and the Commissioner not moving back to the five-day roster has meant a lot of people who are not permanently allocated to community policing but are assigned to those duties will continue in that role. The roster proposal we put forward has a non-core element, which means those community officers will not be working the twilight hours, between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., and will be more available at the times the community needs them.

The main issue that is really presenting a challenge across the organisation is the difficulty of recruitment and retention. The real casualty of the recruitment and retention problem is the rural community policing to which the Deputy referred. We see it being transformed from a community-based service that is there all the time interacting with people to a fire brigade service. In her constituency, the Deputy will see gardaí in outlying stations like Emyvale, if there is anyone left there, getting pulled into Monaghan just to ensure there is a car available to do response policing. That is a huge concern of ours. We talk about the modernisation and transformation agenda. The real danger here is that we are moving towards a model of policing that is taking away that connection and turning us just into response police operating from centralised centres. In 2013, when the station closures programme was undertaken, communities were told there would be modernisation, new technology and a fleet of vehicles that would put more visibility into communities, but our experience-----