Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I rise to support the motion. On a positive note, I acknowledge some of the changes under way in light of recent reports on the handling of specific cases. We must acknowledge in a positive light the good work the Garda youth diversion office does. We believe strongly that one of the greatest interventions that could be made regarding youth diversion is at the community level. I tabled a question to the Minister about the number of community gardaí in the State in May of this year. I recognise that these figures might have been revised upwards in the intervening period, but my tally of the tabular figures I received is that there are 715 in the State in total and that there are large swathes of the country, such as Laois-Offaly, where there are no community gardaí. In Kildare there are four and in Meath there are eight. There is a large concentration in Dublin but, given Dublin's population, it is probably still underserved as well. In the short time I have I ask that the Minister of State, when replying, gives us some assurances about the resources that are deployed to ensure there are more community gardaí on the ground forming relationships and ensuring that the diversion programmes are working. There is obviously a need to ensure we try to stave off the potential for crime to be committed. This is all based on a strong relationship between an individual community and the garda who serves it.

I also want to speak to whether the figures are being understated. I do not wish to revise for the House the issues regarding the historical problems with PULSE. I have tabled questions about knife crime, and I think it is fair by any rational consideration to assume that most knife crime would traverse the areas covered by youth diversion. I acknowledge that there is some work ongoing on the part of the Central Statistics Office and that someone has been appointed by the Garda Commissioner at assistant commissioner level to interact with the CSO to ensure the figures put out in the public domain are accurate. I speak to the specific issue of knife crime because it has gained a lot of traction within society in the recent past and is becoming a phenomenon to which we have become almost desensitised. If the Minister of State responds, he might tell us about the status of the process in respect of an individual garda recording a knife crime on the PULSE system, how that gets translated regarding the interpretation of the relevant legislation and how it gets recorded in the statistics. I fear the statistics are under-representing the true extent of these crimes. I also perceive there could be, or possibly should be, greater urgency on the part of An Garda Síochána to work with the CSO. For too long we have had figures put out into the public domain, or not, with a reservation attached to them on the basis of - these are my words - perhaps a lack of trust in the mechanism to record these crimes on the PULSE system.

I acknowledge that the State has increased the number of Garda personnel, but if more can be done to increase the numbers at community garda level, it would have a beneficial effect on the relationships on the ground between communities and the gardaí, do a lot to reduce these figures further and stave off this phenomenon and do a lot for youth diversion.

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