Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputy O'Callaghan and his Fianna Fáil colleagues for putting down the motion on this issue.

It is a huge issue and we are playing catch-up all the time after all the cuts over the recent years. Morale in An Garda Síochána - I am speaking for Tipperary - is on the floor because it does not have the necessary resources. It is the same for every officer who goes out there every day and night, and God knows what they are going to meet and the work they do throughout the country.

I take serious issue with the Department of Justice and Equality trying to get us to do work on the cheap in the communities. I am chairman of the second community alert group ever set up in the country in 1986. I support community alert and I strongly believe that no police force in the world can survive without the support of the public.

We need the support from An Garda Síochána, at the top. When people are going to work in the morning, not all checkpoints out on the roads should be with the Garda's ordinary white cars. We need undercover covert security to take on the marauding gangs that are terrorising our people. I attended a big community alert meeting of 200 people in New Inn, between Cashel and Cahir, last night and I compliment the organisers. I compliment the new superintendent and the gardaí who attended.

However, I am very concerned we in Tipperary are not getting our fair share of numbers of new recruits the Minister referred to. The Minister also mentioned €100 million in overtime in budget 2018. Funding in overtime has fallen back from our division - I ask the Minister to tell me by how much in his response - in the past number of years while gardaí are out there on their own at checkpoints. I have information that I am afraid to put on the record of the Dáil about the scarcity of numbers in Garda stations in some parts of Tipperary. Why have we only six in a unit in Clonmel while Kilkenny, a town equivalent in size, can have 12? There is something badly wrong. We have not got our recruits. I ask the Minister to ask the Chief Superintendent Catherine Kehoe to account for what is happening in Tipperary. Officers' lives are being put in danger because they have no one to back them up. They have no support on radio. There is no one there to answer. We had a situation last Saturday in my own, Cahir, where there was one member working covering a whole district. It is not acceptable. It is desperately bad management, not by the gardaí on the ground but by the very senior managers in Tipperary.

We had the highest fake figures in the drink-driving as well in Tipperary, which is something I am not proud of. Nor am I blaming the officers on the ground for that. There is something badly wrong in senior management and I want the Minister to tell me that he will meet me and an assistant commission to check this. We cannot have this situation continuing in Tipperary.

The people of Tipperary are entitled to justice and to be protected. At that meeting last night, I met a woman whose brother fled into a nursing home after being robbed seven or eight times and died a lonely sad death of a broken heart. People have been terrorised in their homes. A man, an ex-garda, spoke last night at the meeting of going over a bridge on the River Suir in Ballycahill and coming upon 30 to 40 people last week, whether they were hunting otters, fishing or whatever. When he stopped to take note, he was approached by three of them wearing balaclavas indicating a gun sign at him. That is what we are dealing with. We need more RSU. We need more special forces to deal with the marauding thugs.

We have seen so many incidents in Tipperary. We should not be forcing communities to pay 40% for their CCTV; it is too much. We should not be forcing the community alert groups to pay for the text alerts as these are all part of the battle. We must fund them fully. It is costing too much, especially with so much crime. We cannot keep the money paid to groups and they are getting demoralised. Serious action needs to be taken regarding my division. The Garda station in Clonmel is a Dickensian kip and the sooner that is sorted out the better.

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