Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this Bill. We all speak to the gardaí in our areas. Something that they tell us is that burglary is a difficult crime to detect and becoming even more so. That may be because of television programmes that alert people to the possible detection methods. While I do not oppose strengthening the sentences, I am not sure that it will substantially change the profile of burglaries. Other actions need to be taken.

In many respects, we have a policing system that is reactive rather than proactive. How the Garda service is set up feeds into that. In recent years, more gardaí have necessarily been deployed to the Limerick and Louth divisions, given organised crime in the former, the tragic death of a garda in the latter and other crime statistics. If one considered the yearly crime statistics, however, the need to do this would scream out before it became tragically obvious. In both instances, tragic events prompted the deployments.

Every year, there is a policing plan. It is supposed to change based on demographics and crime rates. I have been following this issue for many years and every year I adjust my document to show where the changes lie. If each year's policing plan is not a work of fiction, then the response to it is. I have seen little or no adjustment based on demographics or crime rates.

I have documented this from CSO figures. County Louth jumped out as an area with very high rates of burglary, robbery and theft. These figures featured before the recent deployment.

I happen to come from the county that has the lowest proportion of gardaí to members of the general population. In 2015, County Kildare had one garda for every 698 people. The average is one garda for every 416 people. It is no big surprise that the crime rate in County Kildare is growing. According to CSO figures, the burglary rate is pretty much on a par with that in Dublin. I do not know what will have to happen for it to be recognised that the lack of gardaí on the ground is actually contributing to this. Counties such as Wicklow, Louth and Meath have the same profile.

I have met the Assistant Commissioner on a number of occasions and pressed the point on the deployment of gardaí. As the population grows, there is no evidence whatsoever that services grow along with it. This includes the number of gardaí. County Kildare is the only county that does not have a dedicated community policing service. The force is so stretched in the county that even answering the telephones in the main Garda stations is prioritised over it. The two counties with the lowest proportion of gardaí to members of the general population are Kildare and Meath. These happen to be two of the counties with a profile of continuous growth.

It is not good enough that the Minister does not have responsibility for the deployment of gardaí. I understand the rationale, but where there is a clear absence of recognition of the two factors in the policing plan that should be used to address the issues that the plan highlights, it is not good enough for the Minister to say it is not her responsibility but that of the Garda Commissioner. If the Garda Commissioner or person nominated by the Garda Commissioner to deploy gardaí is not doing that job, it is the responsibility of the Minister for Justice and Equality to intervene and meet the Commissioner so that there will be some sort of equitable deployment arrangement. I am not talking about deployment based simply on population growth but deployment based on both population growth and crime statistics, which are supposed to be the two dominant criteria affecting deployment. That is partly what is needed if we are to proactively address the issue of burglary.

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