Mr. Mark Toland:

The domestic violence and sexual assault unit effectively is a policy unit. While it performs some investigations, it tends to be involved in investigations into pornography or offences against children. On the domestic violence side, the unit's role is to monitor and to provide support to divisions. Each division in Ireland, of which there are 28, has a nominated inspector who is supposed to check each domestic violence incident but the volume of those crimes means this is not happening. I believe the central unit should be checking where there is a serious domestic violence incident or a serious allegation of rape. The unit should be contacting that division to make sure that everything possible is being done to give it advice and help, and to check that the matter is being investigated thoroughly.

As for what we are recommending, I believe there are 96 district stations in Ireland at present and, effectively, we look at them as being 96 separate units. They work very much in isolation, have a superintendent in charge of them and one could have four or five districts within a division that could be operating completely differently, whereby they could be doing different things with the same crime.

Our report talks about divisions in Ireland, of which there are 28 at present, and we suggest that those divisions should investigate some serious offences with regard to some of the rape investigations and with regard to domestic violence in particular. We recommend they should have a divisional unit with experienced detectives to deal with those cases. Rape is one of the most difficult things to investigate as an investigator, and we have examples of young and inexperienced gardaí who currently are dealing with those cases and when we have spoken to people, they are finding it highly stressful. No investigation time is built into the current roster for many of those people and were it one of my family, I would want a trained investigator to investigate the crime. Consequently, we suggest local investigation units. The first garda will deal with it but a detective will then be called in who will take over that investigation because the attrition rates for serious sexual assaults are very high. One needs trained people to investigate that crime who are well aware of the criminal justice system and the points to prove for a very serious crime.