Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair of the committee for the report and the committee for the hard work it did to compile it. I always look forward to speaking about community policing, having been a member of the joint policing committee in County Galway, as the Minister will be aware. It gives me an opportunity to address a few parochial issues. I note that the committee acknowledged the excellent work done throughout the country in the Garda youth diversion programme. Deputy Funchion has addressed some of the matter. I have only just received figures on how many gardaí are in the programme. There are 115 gardaí, compared with 109 in 2008. There is no junior liaison officer in four important areas - Carlow-Kildare, Longford-Westmeath, Waterford-Kilkenny or Roscommon-Galway East. In the light of what is happening in County Longford, the growth in the population, the use of scramblers throughout Dublin, youth crime, my "Fagin's law" Bill and everything else, the role of junior liaison officers is important in preventing children from descending into more serious crime.

I welcomed the point in the Minister's speech where he talked about the large role gardaí play in supporting people with mental health issues. Dr. Geoffrey Shannon, in his report on section 12 cases, referred to children who need support at the weekends when Tusla would not have been available. I am glad to say a pilot project is happening for that in Galway, which is welcome. We need more of that to support community gardaí. When gardaí have to assist with a section 39 incident, they are taken away from their day-to-day work, such as if they have to attend to a hospital, which happened on a particular bank holiday weekend in Galway and left the Garda numbers on the ground depleted. That sort of thing happens far too regularly. It results in other services being dropped, whether in primary care or Tusla, and puts pressure back on community gardaí.

I want to address the issue of CCTV. I am glad to hear we now have clarity about this and I will push for the gardaí to be more involved with CCTV. I have spoken before about bridge crossings and motorways, for which we need to have Garda CCTV feeding into the local Garda station. Rat-runs have developed from Cork and Dublin to Galway, with people going across the bridges at Portumna, Killaloe or Banagher, and then they are gone again. They come down the motorway from Limerick, exit at Gort, and then they are into the midlands - our hidden heartlands. They raid us at whatever hour, rob a few places along the way, then they are gone again - they come in one way and go out by another. We need that Garda CCTV. If the Minister wants to pilot it to see how it works, the bridge in Portumna would welcome the intervention.

This is a matter of having boots on the ground. In a parliamentary question, I asked how many gardaí are on maternity leave. At present, between 94 and 97 gardaí are on maternity leave. It is different from when one goes on maternity leave from the Department of Education and Skills in that they are not replaced. We need to look at it because it is another void in the community. How we can work with that or have a reserve to cover for that duty should be explored, because it leaves gaps across the country. They play an invaluable role and we need to ensure they are covered.

The gardaí in the Galway division do phenomenal work to support youth discos but more needs to be done. There are so few youth discos nowadays that large numbers show up. We should never curtail young children, who are not used to going out, from going out, but we need to ensure we have gardaí available to support that.

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