Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It seems from the Minister's response that an additional nine recruits are to be deployed in County Wicklow. I was not aware of that but I welcome it nonetheless. I will give an example of rural crime in County Wicklow, which depends significantly on tourism. Two weeks ago, eight cars were broken into at the Shay Elliott car park in Glenmalure. Such incidents cast a bad reflection on County Wicklow as a tourism destination and cause additional worry. People in the county have been working on this issue for a number of years. When I was a member of the Wicklow joint policing committee, we came up with a number of initiatives, including the tourism ambassador programme. We rolled out tourism ambassadors in sensitive rural locations throughout the county. We are losing that now because of the reduced number of people going into the Tús programme. Additional signage has been installed in sensitive tourism locations to warn visitors not to leave property in their cars. More resources are needed because gardaí just cannot get to remote rural locations at present.

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