Mr. Séamus Boland:

I thank the committee for the invitation. For the record, like Deputy Commissioner Kelly, I have 35 years' policing service in An Garda Síochána. The first 20 of those years were policing the drugs issue in the north and south inner city, so we are aware of all those issues. Regarding the targeting of organised crime and the gangs at local level, as the Deputy said, we are conscious of these forces and our finite resources. We changed our operating model from a targeting perspective, going back as far as 2016, when organised crime hit a sad peak in Ireland with the Regency attack. With our collaboration, which has happened with our international colleagues under the direction of Deputy Commissioner Kelly, we focus on much analysis across the country at a national level. Data is important in all these circumstances. It is important for us to identify which groups and networks have been impacting areas across the country. That process takes place. We identify our priority targets at national level and link in at local level. At a national level, in the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, we are linking in with all the local, regional and divisional policing units around the country. That is continuously developing.

We identify that seizures alone do not deal with many issues on the ground. For many years, we have liked to say that we like to focus on quality rather than quantity because if you can have the right people being apprehended and sent to prison, and if you disrupt and dismantle the groups that are behind this - the decision-makers and the people who are facilitating and enabling them - that is when you have an actual impact.

It is important to highlight that in policing, every time we discuss something around a table, we find that it tends to have negative connotations and we would think we live in a terrible world. However, given the manner in which we have tackled some of the organised crime issues in Ireland in recent years, it is important to point out that Ireland currently has the lowest level of organised crime-related murders that I have experienced in my career. That is not by chance. That is a net result of targeting the right sections and having the right resources. The challenge for us in policing is to try to maintain a positive situation like that going forward. In many presentations in the past, I have harped on about a global peace index which measures many different aspects of society in more than 163 different countries worldwide. It is printed in many years. Ireland used to have an average index on that. It is not just related to crime but also to social status, employment and many issues. Crime and corruption, including the level of crime and fear of crime, are taken into account. Only one country, Iceland, is ahead of Ireland this year on the global peace index. We have achieved second place. Law enforcement is part of that. It is not just law enforcement but there are some positives stories.

We are aware of the local issues. Similar to the drug-related intimidation and the analysis of data that is involved in that, as an organisation, we have recognised this as a significant issue since 2013, when we first established our drug-related intimidation reporting programme in each division in the country. Now we have the drug-related intimidation and violence engagement, DRIVE, project. I know the citizens' assembly had much detail about the DRIVE project, which is a cross-agency issue. The data that will be received in that will help all of us to identify where the problems are and perhaps even who the problems are in certain areas. Our internal data on that is already quite interesting. That will determine where our focus is in all our efforts to try to deal with these issues. We all live in communities; gardaí live in communities too. We do not want these issues taking place. Drug-related intimidation and some of that violence go across the spectrum of society. Nobody holds a monopoly on it, even though it affects some communities more than others.