Mr. Mark Toland:

We did not find that as part of the survey because we did not look into that detail. We certainly did not get that impression when we went out and did focus groups. Most of the young people in the organisation will be on the units that go out at the weekend, because that is where they start their policing career. We certainly believe the district structure means that districts in the same division - sometimes there can be four, five or six districts in a division - make decisions on whether people have the night off and what duties they do without someone taking a divisional look to ensure there are sufficient people on duty across the division instead of in 96 districts. What we found on the Saturday night was that a greater proportion of people were due to come on duty but were actually not at work. This was a significant number of people with authorised absence. We recommend examining why 1,300 people did not come on duty across Ireland that night. There is a legitimate reason, which is that someone gave them the time off, but that is when people are needed and the roster was brought in to put more people on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights.