Mr. Ronan Slevin:

I will come in on that as well. While we all accept that the service has to change and modernise at a time of crisis, the one thing we seem to have forgotten is that community policing, and policing as a whole, is a service. It is not a business. Unfortunately, it has morphed into a more business-type model instead of a service to the community. It has to be accepted that some years the service will cost. It could be extravagant. It is very seldom there is a quiet year in respect of costs with An Garda Síochána, but it is a service we provide to the community. The most important ingredient in that service is the workforce. Unfortunately, for the past number of years, the workforce seems to have been forgotten. If we analyse that report released by An Garda Síochána only last week, the majority of it relates to hardware, equipment and progress on IT. There is not a mention of the workforce that has to deliver that service to the public we serve.

There needs to be a change in the way senior Garda management not only interacts but listens to the issues on the ground. When we were here previously, we gave a warning on public order training. In not less than 30 days after that, we had riots in Dublin city, when we struggled to provide a service. Luckily enough, we did. We are not here to give out. We are trying to solve the issues we come across on a daily basis. Unfortunately, morale has been denied, and continues to be denied, as being an issue. An issue cannot be addressed if it is not accepted there is one. That is the biggest problem we have with senior Garda management. The issue we are addressing in respect of morale is that management does not accept the issue exists. It is then very hard in respect of the core issues that relate to that, be they suspension, discipline, no training, and the current attempt to push through policies that are unagreed, which invite conflict with the associations and their members. Another conflict is coming in that regard. The Commissioner has imposed a suspension policy that has not been agreed. In our view, it breaches pay agreements. We are coming to a situation of conflict about that, unnecessarily.