Mr. Ronan Slevin:

The first question related to pursuits.

A pursuit policy was issued within An Garda Síochána recently that creates issues in itself. The policy states you cannot engage in a pursuit unless you have received pursuit training but there is actually no form of pursuit training within An Garda Síochána and there does not appear to be any in the design of that course for administration to our drivers. This leaves all our members, be it from the control rooms to the drivers themselves, having to make a snap decision on whether they are going to allow a pursuit to continue, as the controller, and as the driver on whether you are suitable to engage in a pursuit. However, their decisions which are made in a split second will be analysed as slowly as possible if an error is made and that is causing some serious concern for our members because we are responsible for everything we do. Within reason, that is acceptable but you cannot have a situation where gardaí are not empowered to pursue these people. If they do not pursue, the way they will get away is that everyone will just exceed the speed limit in the knowledge that Garda members will not follow. That follows on then to, as the Deputy mention, antisocial behaviour. We see it every day on social media with electric scooters, electric bikes, scramblers and quad bikes. The end does not justify the means, unfortunately, regarding the actions members may have to take to bring such a chase or an incident to conclusion and may result in consequences the member will then be responsible for. Not every vehicle has a stinger in it. Not every traffic roads-policing vehicle has a stinger in it so it is not always feasible or possible that in any of those pursuits - if you are even in a position to deploy a stinger - one will be available to bring that pursuit to a conclusion. What happens then in the majority of cases is that members will have to withdraw from those pursuits, which further emboldens those youths who are involved in that behaviour to go again. It is a situation where there is no doubt An Garda Síochána will have to deploy sizable resources and even maybe train some Garda motorcyclists to use scramblers themselves to try to counteract that antisocial behaviour.

The last question was on the EVs and the chargers. Speaking as an EV owner, we have no superchargers in any Garda station. At best, it is what you see at home, a 7 kW or 22 kW which is completely inadequate. There are EVs that are in use 24-7 and the ideal scenario is that on a change of shift the outgoing car crew would plug in to a supercharger and the vehicle would be close enough to 80% charged by the time the incoming crew would take over but that is not the scenario. The way An Garda Síochána is at the moment, it basically means you nearly need two patrol cars to operate on a day. One will have to be charging while the other one is in use. It is comical. What you see now is EV cars with two gardaí sitting in them while their car is being charged, on duty for up to 40 minutes in a supercharger in some occasions twice on a shift. It is not the best use of resources and it definitely does not show foresight and planning before these are released.