Mr. Robert K. Olson:

The roster, when it went into play from a four-unit to a five-unit roster, basically gave everybody who was on it 42 more days off. They are still working close to the same hours, but a little less. There was no place to go for many of those bodies and they were taken from other places. The bottom line was that 18% of the gardaí who normally would have shown up for work some mornings on the old roster did not show up because they had to be put into the fifth unit. Gardaí, as we found in our review, who should not even have been on it were on it. For example, why does a detective have to be on at 3 a.m. on Sunday? I do not know who he or she will interview - probably no one. Detectives need to be around close to the courts. When the courts are open, when businesses are open and when victims are available, that is when one needs detectives. We recommended that there now need to be many rosters that fit the functions of those gardaí. If one looks at the addendum to Chapter 2, there is a full section with examples of rosters from other police organisations. We are not saying that they should have a particular roster but that we should look at what certain other police organisations are doing with their personnel. There are some pretty good rosters in there and it just might help them develop good ones.