Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Martin that these burglaries and attacks on ordinary people are deplorable, and I condemn them without reservation. I am glad that many of those involved, although not all of them to date, will be brought before the courts under the law. It is most unfortunate that a death occurred among the cases the Deputy mentioned.

We live in a very different type of society. I and the Garda are aware that a small number of gangs are responsible for carrying out the majority of burglaries. It also appears that many of those who carry out these burglaries and vandalism, including beating up elderly women and so forth, are high as a result of substance abuse and create fearsome damage.

Garda stations were closed. This is an operational matter for the Garda. Having looked at the situation in so far as the closure of the Garda Training College in Templemore is concerned, where there were no gardaí coming through, that college has now been re-opened and 500 new Garda recruits are going through the college on an ongoing basis and coming into active service. There has been a change in the legislation for dealing with burglary which provides that consecutive sentencing can apply. These are important matters. A sum of €27 million has been allocated to the Garda for vehicles over the last number of years. In particular, finance has been made available for specialist vehicles to deal with high speed chases.

The valid point the Garda can make is that there are an extra 61,000 community hours because gardaí can now be in the community. That is important in respect of communications, intelligence and information. With regard to the capital programme announced yesterday, when the Government looked at the inferior, outdated and inadequate technological systems that the Garda has had to endure, it decided that must change and over €200 million has been allocated for that. One would like to think it could be done today, but obviously that is not possible.

The observations and vigilance of communities are very strong. The community text alert is a valuable instrument for notifying Garda stations and gardaí of incidents, strangers or strange activity in a locality. Obviously, the situation is not as satisfactory as we would wish. In fairness, a number of the very old Garda stations that were in various communities, where gardaí were expected to stay for a couple of hours once or twice a week to sign unemployment forms, would not prevent any crime. However, Community Alert, community information, access, proper equipment, good vehicles and proper technology are essential for gardaí to be able to their job. That is where the Government's focus is. I have been speaking to chief superintendents in their districts and they say the freeing up of gardaí to do community work is an important aspect of the work they must do.

I regret that these burglaries occur and I hope the Minister for Justice and Equality in conjunction with the Garda Commissioner can put a specific plan in place to deal with the gangs that are carrying out burglaries on a nightly basis in various parts of the country.

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