Mr. Ronan Slevin:

On the bicycle question, I do not believe the new conduct, performance and standards of professional behaviour regulations will change that. I still believe an issue like that can happen. In fact, I believe the new regulations reduce our members' protections given that previously an appeal board was set up to mirror the Labour Court, with an independent chairperson, an employee representative and an employer representative. Under these new regulations, on the conduct side of things they have taken away the employer and employee representatives and there is a retired judge as a sole, independent chair with no input from either the management side or the employee side with an understanding of the corporate knowledge aspect.

Unfortunately, with the performance regulations, there is no independent chair for the review process. It is with a deputy commissioner. There is absolutely no oversight at all of the decision of an employer to get rid of an employee. As the Senator is well aware, we do not enjoy the protections of the Labour Court for unfair dismissals. That was the reason behind the setting-up of the appeal board under the old regulations. It mirrored the Labour Court as the best practice within the State. Now, we are exempt from that as well. That causes a great deal of apprehension among our members because they do not believe they will get a fair hearing.

In relation to the OPM community policing, it creates huge divisions that provide flexibility for Garda management. The committee has no doubt heard we have a certain number of Garda stations with a certain number of Garda members attached to those stations but in reality, I am sure everyone here knows there are gardaí in country stations who are never there because they are brought into urban areas to supplement the urban units, which are under-resourced. When they answer calls in the rural areas, it is only a satellite service. They just visit the call, do what needs to be done and get back to the urban area, where the requirement is there more regularly. It breaks that link we used to enjoy with the community where a garda, as I was, was stationed in a country station and dealt with the majority of incidents that happened there. We developed bonds with the community and knew everything that went on in the place and if anything did happen, we were a source of knowledge for any investigation that was ongoing. We could also rely on people within that community to give us knowledge we might not posses ourselves. That link is gone and if the model continues in its current format, we will never get that link back.