Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to be associated with the expressions of sympathy to the family of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe, particularly his wife, Caroline, his daughter, Amy, his son, Niall, his parents and all the people in the community in which he lived who, by all accounts, have lost an outstanding person.

As a garda living in the community, Adrian Donohoe epitomised that to which those in rural Ireland have become used. The reality is that this matter does not relate to Garda stations. Rather, it relates to community gardaí and a plan which seems to have been lifted from a manual written in some other country and which appears to be designed to change the very nature of rural policing. As I understand it, the Minister will continue to close Garda stations until what we will be left with will be mobile patrols from district headquarters. Different officers will carry out those patrols each day and none of them will actually be resident in the communities in which they will be operating. In addition, they will not be in a position to tap into the intelligence that is available to local gardaí who operate within their own communities.

Any communities which are fortunate enough to have gardaí living within them have very low levels of crime. They are also subject to extremely low levels of juvenile delinquency because, in most cases, a local garda will hear about such behaviour and will deal with it before it results in the commission of a significant crime or in the young person involved ending up before the courts. Preventative policing is a great deal better than trying to deal with the damage after it has happened through detective work and curative policing.

I wish to inform the Minister how the Garda is operating under his remit. The Maam Garda district is the largest such district in the entire country. There is a Garda barracks there and we have a very good and diligent local garda. When he needs a car, he is obliged to request one from Clifden, which is 30 miles away, or Rosmuc, which is 15 miles away. If the car in Rosmuc is out on patrol, he is obliged to remain in the barracks until it becomes available. In the part of the country in which I live, it could be a long time before it arrives.

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