Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I extend my sympathies to the family of Adrian Donohoe and his colleagues in An Garda Síochána. I welcome any debate on policing in Ireland.

Since the start of this Dáil, we have certainly not debated policing in any great depth and a debate is long overdue. There is an attitude among the public that policing as applied here over the past 50, 80 or 90 years remains applicable in today's world. It is not, but like with everything else here, policing and politics included, we are slow to change. However, in many respects, An Garda Síochána as a force has moved and embraced technology and changes, far more than politicians. Elected politicians seem to be afraid to move an issue like policing into the modern age and no better example of this than the confines of this discussion on Garda stations.

Most of the population does not care too much about the concrete buildings that are Garda stations or whether there are two or three stations in the neighbourhood. People are more concerned with the nature of policing. Just because a police station closes does not mean there will be no policing. Some opportunists connect the two, but I believe that is dishonest. Reference was made earlier to the position in Scotland. Like Ireland, Scotland has both large urban and rural areas and while its system has its shortcomings, some of the changes that have taken place in policing there have been dramatic and have proved very beneficial. I refer in particular to community policing.

I live in the third largest centre of population in this country, after Dublin and Cork. In Tallaght, there are over 100,000 people, putting us ahead of Galway and Limerick, and we do not have five stations or 25 stations. We have just one Garda station. As the Minister would be proud to boast, last year crimes in certain areas there declined. I believe that is due to the way in which the area has embraced community policing. We must do the same as politicians. We cannot keep telling people we must have a Garda station on every corner so that everyone will feel safe. We must get away from that.

What is forcing us to change is technology. People have a sentimental attachment to Garda stations, which is understandable, but that was all very well when policing was done from push bikes. That has all changed. We will miss our opportunity to change if we believe for a second that the criminals in society have not embraced technology. That would be fooling ourselves. As legislators and in conjunction with the Garda, we must embrace technology. That is how we control and diminish crime.

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