Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The people who carry out these burglaries, particularly on elderly people, are reprehensible. It is the most cowardly act anyone could commit. That needs to be said. To date, 1,700 people have been arrested and 1,000 people have already been charged.

As I stated, the Commissioner feels it would take a disproportionate amount of Garda time to calculate the resources in the dedicated budget. That is being done but I do not have that information here. I assume that it will be in the Commissioner's plan to be presented to the Minister by the end of October. There is a dedicated budget and the Deputy will note from the figures I presented that clearly Operation Fiacla is working. He will agree that we cannot have a garda on every lane or every street corner. We all know that. The issue is about people being conscious and aware of the different types of information that are available, such as the texting service the Garda is very interested in putting forward in terms of suspicious vehicles being seen in different areas. It is all about that, but clearly the operation the Commissioner has put in place has managed to deter many people whose intent was not honourable.

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