Mr. Michael O'Driscoll:

For me, there is not a proper connection in terms of my business and the Garda. If there is an issue, when I meet the superintendent, as I have done before, there is a bit of effort for a while. Gardaí come in and ask if everything is okay and then that just drips again. The problem for me is that there are not gardaí on the street. I believe there needs to be gardaí assigned to a street for a certain period so that they get to know everybody and get to know the street. They are coming and going. They are moved around and they are not consistent to an area. We need that. We need to be able to go out and see who the gardaí are. We need to know. They need to be coming in and talking to us.

The other problem is that because nothing happens in terms of crime, the gardaí, many of whom I have spoken to, are disillusioned. They take small petty cases to court, and nothing happens to those involved. We are left to deal with those situations ourselves. I would only call the gardaí when I have a serious issue or where somebody is potentially coming in or there is an attempted assault. We are forced to deal with simple things ourselves because, really, we are going to get nothing more than that. I might bring a garda in for something that happened and ask if he or she knows that person. Most of the time, the garda will say that he or she does not know the person. Gardaí should know them because we know them. If they are on the street and policing it, for me, that is the problem.

The speed at which we get a garda to come into the store is also a problem because there are not enough gardaí. We could be waiting one hour after reporting an incident or we could be lucky. There could be a garda close by and we could have someone there within five minutes who might be able to deal with that situation. I have noticed it since the riots when there was a lot more focus. I had two or three incidents. Two boys came in one evening with masks on their faces. I knew they were going to hold the till up. They were definitely going to hold it up. They were working their way into it. I challenged one of them and the next thing that happened was that four plain clothes gardaí came in and dragged them out of the shop. They had been following them. That was where the real policing was for me. I had other instances where I have gone out after someone else on the street and the gardaí were on them. They caught them in the act of doing something and were able to arrest them. That really gives us a certain safe feeling in the environment we are in.