Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I also congratulate the Minister and Minister of State on their appointments. I wish them well in the coming years. I am pleased that the Minister represents a constituency in the commuter belt, particularly as the lowest ratios of gardaí to population are in Meath and Kildare, respectively. I know it is down to the Garda Commissioner to deploy resources but I am sure that fact will not go unnoticed by the Minister. Those of us in the areas to which I refer noticed a high level of Garda visibility during the lockdown and that is not something we had seen previously. Some degree of equity of service needs to be pressed home.

We would not be considering these Revised Estimates if it was not for Covid-19. Money has obviously had to be spent because of the actions that had to be taken. An Garda was heavily involved in the first instance and, for example, some recruits from Templemore were attested early. The Minister might address how that will play out to ensure that we do not lose the momentum of recruitment because there will also be retirements. Will those recruits who were attested early still receive their full training?

There has been an overspend of nearly €8 million on the leasing of vehicles. We noticed that because it was done quickly. Sometimes when something is done quickly, there is not the capacity to get the kind of value for money that would have been achieved in a long process. Will those vehicles be retained in the fleet? Will the number of vehicles be compatible with the number of recruits? How will that play out in the next few months? Obviously, these may well be considerations for next year also.

There were some changes in rosters and other things that seem to have worked quite well. While such things might be more costly, having gardaí who are fresh is beneficial from the point of view of officers themselves. A total of 319 recruits came into front-line policing. That is the group about which I am talking. I am interested in what will happen to that group and what the role of Templemore will be. With social distancing requirements and all the rest of it, what will happen in Templemore? I think 124 gardaí who were attached to the Garda Training College were redeployed to front-line service.

Will there be funding available for the new divisional headquarters? I was disappointed that the divisional headquarters in the districts of Kildare and Laois-Offaly went to Portlaoise because the population of Kildare is considerably larger than that of the other two counties put together. It is important that we do not lose personnel when numbers are already low. The same thing happened in the Meath area when Mullingar was designated as the divisional headquarters.

What has happened with the passenger locator forms? That was obviously something that would not have happened without Covid and that work is still ongoing. The Department of Justice was temporarily tasked with the administration of the passenger locator forms at the ports and airports. Border management unit officials co-ordinated the regime from their Dublin Airport base. The Garda National Immigration Bureau managed the compliance at ports and sent forms to the border management unit at Dublin Airport. Can the Minister outline the administrative cost of taking this project on? How was the handover back to the Department of Health conducted? Where does that fall in terms of the Estimates, particularly as it occurred midway through the fiscal year? Has a security gap emerged now that the Garda and the border unit staff are no longer involved?

Will the cost now be borne by the HSE and at what stage did that happen?

I reiterate the point about domestic violence. It is not just a Department of Justice and Equality issue. We had a debate recently on that. The Department funded NGOs in this area to the tune of €200,000 and while that was welcome, the scale of what came up was such that it was a relatively small amount of money. This is not exclusively a criminal justice issue. There have to be routes through which people can leave that kind of environment. The punishment should not be on the people who have to leave because they are the ones who are subject to the violence.

I reiterate the point Deputy Funchion made about the operational protocol. This is a group of people who have been badly left behind in the roadmap in the context of adult day services. We really do need to move very quickly to a rights-based approach and we need to adopt that protocol. So many of our services to that cohort are provided by charities. In the absence of that rights-based approach, there is a serious problem in terms of a guarantee of services. I do not think I have ever met a parent of a child with a disability who does not end up with a big file because he or she has become a permanent lobbyist. That is why we have to guarantee services. I am not sure if this is the part of the work of the Department that will be moving elsewhere. I do not think we can say often enough that the optional protocol is critical in terms of guaranteeing a rights-based approach.

What has happened to the civilianisation of the force during the lockdown? Are we going to lose momentum on it this year? I would be concerned about that because it is going to provide us with the balance of resources we all have been hoping to get to. Reconnecting that process in such an uncertain time is going to be problematic.

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