Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact the Minister has allocated additional money to purchase 260 vehicles. They are welcome and needed.

We should go further in many areas that we have previously discussed, such as recruitment, mandatory sentencing and a camera network along our motorways and at motorway junctions.

The Minister and I have a different perspective on Garda stations. The Government feels it made right decision in closing 139 Garda stations. Everybody else is on the other side of the argument, including the political establishment, community-based organisations, the IFA, members of An Garda Síochána, the GRA and the AGSI. They all feel it was the wrong decision to remove the presence of An Garda Síochána from many communities. In my constituency in Doon, County Limerick, a man died.

The proof that it was the wrong decision, along with everything else, is the fact that we have a detection rate of 13% in respect of burglaries. I know the Government will be very slow to back down on this, but in order to move the debate on and to bring a degree of realism to it, would the Minister not ask the Garda Inspectorate to carry out an impact analysis of the areas where Garda stations were closed to see how the level of policing diminished and crime rates varied arising from that? We were supposed to have an independent An Garda Síochána review of the decision following its implementation. I do not know why that did not happen, but in the absence of that could we please have an independent panel? Could the Minister ask the Garda Inspectorate to consider it?

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