Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I heard late last night that the Minister paid a visit to my constituency. He visited the Garda station in Newcastle West, which is in need of refurbishment works, as he knows. Had I known he was there, I would have come along. I would have pointed out to him that the relatively new Garda station down the road in Abbeyfeale is open for only a small number of hours per day. This station was opened in late 2006 by the then Minister, Michael McDowell. There is a glaring need for that purpose-built Garda station to be open much more to serve the local community in Abbeyfeale.

On the other side of County Limerick, the Bruff district has not had a permanent superintendent for a long period. We have had many fine superintendents passing through the place. Currently, there is a very good acting superintendent. I ask the Minister to direct his efforts towards securing a permanent superintendent for the Bruff district.

There are two other points I want to make. Limerick suffered a catastrophic loss in its number of gardaí during the years of the moratorium. We are still well behind the curve in catching up. We have fared very poorly in terms of the recruitment allocation from Templemore.

My last point is on the provision of CCTV. The scheme administered by the Department is a joke. People who apply are not being awarded grant aid towards the provision of CCTV. The application process is completely complicated and convoluted, as the Minister well knows. We are running a pilot scheme in Limerick throughout our joint policing committee, of which I am a member. It is quite successful. In conjunction with the local authority and the gardaí, we are rolling out the scheme right across the county. I ask the Minister and his Department to partner up with the joint policing committee in Limerick and roll out the scheme in more communities across the county and the rest of the country.

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