Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I wish to offer my condolences on the death of Mr. Harris's colleague, Garda Flatley. I would like him to pass on my condolences to all of the members of An Garda Síochána for the loss of their colleague.

I listened to Mr. Harris's opening statement and to the reports on the media last night relating to the positive aspects of the Garda. I am going to be honest. They do not necessarily reflect the experiences of people in my community when it comes to the visibility of gardaí in the area. I represent Dublin Mid-West. We have three full-time Garda stations in Clondalkin, Ronanstown and Lucan. There is a part-time Garda station in Rathcoole. We also have Ballyfermot, which covers a small part of my constituency in Palmerstown. On paper that seems like a good service, but there is an issue unless we see gardaí on the ground and the street. There is a genuine lack of visibility in the area. I deal with people all the time relating to the response that they get from the Garda when they ring about incident, whatever the incident is. A garda might call two or three days later, or they might not get a call back at all and no one drops out to them. This gets reported to me on a regular basis. That leaves communities in a sense of fear. It also leaves parts of my community feeling that they are living in a lawless society because they have not got that visibility around there.

We have some really good community gardaí in my area. I know them and I have a good working relationship with them. One of my areas was mentioned by the Commissioner earlier in the context of the street leagues. I know the work that they do. It is fantastic. There is just not enough of them. One of the issues that I have, which I notice regularly, is when there is a serious incident in another part of Dublin, for example, there is a push to get that visibility on the streets of Dublin. It seems to come from the surrounding areas of Dublin and probably from outside of Dublin as well, where gardaí are taken from those areas and brought into another area. I know this.

If I know this, you had better believe the criminals working in my area know this, too. Any time there is a high-profile incident elsewhere in Dublin, people will see a high prevalence of antisocial behaviour, open drug dealing and the like going on in my area. When there is a serious incident - and there will be serious incidents; that is just the nature of the witnesses' line of work - is there a better way of dealing with it rather than taking away from communities already at a disadvantage?