David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge Deputy McConalogue's interest in and passion for this issue and I thank him for raising it. I apologise for the Minister for Justice and Equality who cannot be here this evening.

I wish to reiterate for the House yet again that the deployment of Garda resources, including personnel, to specific areas, as the Deputy will appreciate, is solely the responsibility of the Garda Commissioner and his management team. The Commissioner has publicly spoken about issues such as protecting our most vulnerable and he has highlighted that his priority is a policing model that will provide the best outcomes for communities.

The distribution of Garda resources is constantly monitored and a distribution model is used that takes into account all relevant factors, including population, crime trends and overall policing needs at local level. It is then a matter for the divisional chief superintendent to determine the optimum distribution of duties among the personnel available to him or her, having regard to the profile of the area and its specific needs. That applies equally in both rural and urban areas.

The Commissioner has informed the Minister that on 31 January 2019, the latest date for which figures are readily available, the strength of the Donegal division was 409, with 63 gardaí assigned to the Milford Garda district. There are also 13 Garda Reserves and 35 civilians attached to the division.

An Garda Síochána has responded to the type of threats that communities face through a robust and determined drive against criminals who seek to prey on vulnerable householders with the implementation of special operations such as Operation Thor, which is active in the Donegal division and focused on burglary and burglary-related crime. Since the beginning of Operation Thor in 2015 up to 15 January 2019, there have been 9,290 arrests, 10,662 charges, 34,720 searches, 273,355 patrols, 177,488 checkpoints and 97,480 intelligence reports.

Since the reopening of the Garda College in September 2014, almost 2,400 recruits have attested as members of An Garda Síochána and have been assigned to mainstream duties nationwide, of whom 55 were assigned to the Donegal division. I am informed by the Commissioner that the Milford Garda district has now been designated as a Garda training district and it is expected that newly attested probationer gardaí will be allocated to the district following the planned attestation of a further 200 probationer gardaí next month.

The Commissioner has also informed the Minister that it is his intention to recruit a total of 600 trainee gardaí in 2019 along with a net 600 Garda staff. The recruitment of the additional Garda staff will allow the Commissioner to redeploy this year a further 500 fully trained gardaí from administrative duties to the front-line duties for which they are trained. The injection of this large number of experienced officers into the field, along with the new recruits, will be really beneficial in terms of protecting communities.

Furthermore, the Commissioner has been provided with an additional €100 million in 2019, bringing his total budget to almost €1.8 billion. This substantial investment will allow the accelerated recruitment programme to continue, in tandem with the deployment of new and leading-edge technology to support front-line gardaí in carrying out their work of delivering a visible, effective and responsive police service to communities across all Garda divisions, including the Donegal division in 2019 and future years.

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