Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Taoiseach knows, the establishment of the divisional protective services units is one of the reforms provided for in the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland report. These units were established to provide a consistent and professional approach to the investigation of sexual crime, human trafficking, child abuse and domestic abuse. Last week, the Minister for Justice and Equality admitted that just 13 divisional protective service units have been rolled out to date. This falls far short of what has been committed to in successive policing plans since 2016. The roll-out of the units was to have been completed across all divisions by the end of 2019, yet we are coming to the end of the year with only 65% of these protective service units delivered.

My party leader, Deputy McDonald, has regularly raised these delays with the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Garda Commissioner over the past two years. So slow has been the pace of delivery that the Garda Representative Association told delegates at its annual conference in May that the protective service unit in Cork, established in 2017, had been unable to take on any new cases since late last year.

We have also raised the missed deadlines on the domestic violence risk assessment tool first committed to in the policing plan of 2016. Garda management committed to developing and implementing a risk assessment matrix for all victims of domestic violence and sexual crime by the end of 2016. No revised date for the completion of this project has been provided and perhaps the Taoiseach can advise on that.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the annual 16-day campaign opposing violence against women. These policing reforms, already the norm in other countries, are critical to the protection of women and children, yet there is no sense of urgency from the Garda Commissioner or from the Minister for delivering on these existing commitments. What attention has the policing reform implementation programme office within the Department of the Taoiseach given to domestic and gender-based violence and policing commitments? Can we now expect a roll-out of the protective service units being completed?

See this speech in context