Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

I could get quite bemused by the Minister tangling around with his 1% up and 1% down. It reminds me of the old saying about "lies, damned lies and statistics" and I am not being unparliamentary in saying so. Perhaps my approach is based on my being from west Cork, but I note we have approximately 500 burglaries every week. This is a horrendous figure and we should not really be talking about whether the rate increased or decreased by 1%. We should accept that burglaries are causing considerable fear and concern and, as Deputy Howlin rightly pointed out, yet more concern is being generated because so many of them occur while the home owners are actually at home. We should be talking about how we can tackle this.

On the Minister agreeing with the approach in respect of community policing, is the bottom line not that we are paying for not putting in place the extra gardaí promised four years ago? Regardless of whether we are referring to community police or others, we do not have sufficient numbers. Until the 2,000 additional gardaí promised are provided, we will not have enough for community policing or other forms of policing in the State.

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