Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are not taking community gardaí out of communities. We are freeing them up to be more engaged with members of the community. These are operational decisions. I am not washing my hands of them. I support the Garda Commissioner. These are operational decisions made by the Garda Commissioner who has the statutory right and expertise to make them. I know some people are unhappy with change. A retired assistant commissioner has stated that he does not know what smart policing is and does not understand why we are doing all of this. I do not believe that in 2013 we need the station network we were handed in 1922 in colonial times. We all have smart phones and so on nowadays. Smart policing is about flexibility within the policing service to adapt policing to meet the exigencies that arise, to facilitate the putting in place of special operations and to ensure the availability of the transport and capacity to deal with mobile gangs throughout the country. Having members of the force unnecessarily engaged in administrative duties is not smart. I accept that members of the force do important duties such as signing passport forms and so on. However, we do not need 700 stations, which is what the Deputy wants, so that passport forms can be signed. We need trained members of the force engaged in the work for which they have been trained. We need them engaged in crime prevention and detection.

At the end of this process we will still have proportionately far more stations in our station network than any of the networks existing in neighbouring police forces. I keep giving the example of 340 stations in Scotland for a population of 5.2 million. With all of the closures implemented we will have 564 stations for a population of 4.5 million.

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