Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Civilianisation enables the direct replacement of sworn members who are engaged in exclusively clerical, administrative or technical duties with civilian staff. In many other cases, however, it allows sworn members who would otherwise need to devote substantial parts of their working days performing administrative duties, such as data entry about crime incidents into the PULSE system, to focus exclusively on front line policing duties. Civilian staff may also be recruited to perform new or expanded administrative, managerial and professional support roles in the Garda Síochána, for example, as crime analysts or IT specialists. These roles did not exist within the organisation until recently. In my meeting with the Garda Commissioner, we discussed further the use of civilians in the context of other Garda functions. This matter is now under review and I hope additional gardaí whose work can be undertaken by civilians will be returned to front line services.

The Garda vetting unit does an extraordinary job. Frankly, it is somewhat overwhelmed by the number of applications to it. There has been a substantial increase in the number of applications for vetting. The average timeframe for determining most applications is between ten and 12 weeks, but this is too long. It is an issue about which I complained from the Opposition side of the House more than one year ago. Additional staff have been recruited to the Garda vetting office and sanction is being given for a further ten staff to be recruited. The further development of the office was a subject of my discussion with the Garda Commissioner last Friday. We are examining what steps might be taken to provide additional staff in the vetting office by way of civilians, not by way of gardaí. A number of new arrangements that I hope can be implemented pursuant to the Croke Park agreement would facilitate this.

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