Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am please to speak on this, as part of the overall of policing in Ireland, which is an important programme of modernisation. My first point is on the geographical challenge and the communications around it. Clearly, the new divisional structure envisaged is different in the Dublin area to the Galway and Mayo areas. I reflect on colleagues working in constituencies such as County Mayo and the sheer size and scale to look after, as a Deputy. An Garda Síochána looking after it on a divisional basis, with the distribution of specific functions across that is interesting, but there is a communications challenge around how that will work. Just as we have seen the importance of communication in the vaccine rollout, we need to be able to explain to people what this means and where they go. If part of it is in Wexford but the crime end is down in Bray and I have a shop in Wexford which has been broken into three times and have to go to Bray to talk to the crime specialist. It may work better and that is fine, but we need to carefully explain how that will work and why it is better. It is very different in Dublin.

With regard to what Deputies Murphy and Murnane O'Connor have said, in my area of Killiney-Shankill-Dún Laoghaire area, a new town is being built beside me. Some 30,000 people are expected to live there, in Cherrywood. It is right beside the M50, on the LUAS line and we are extending the DART line to it. It is an extraordinary piece of infrastructure. It is full of retail. Huge apartments are going up and it is a good project, from a house perspective, but there is absolutely no policing plan for it, which I cannot understand. If any other Deputy came in here and said there was a town of 30,000 in his or her community and there is no policing plan for it or even the identification of a site for a station - I do not see how my constituency is different in what it needs. I have raised it again and again through the joint policing committee. I have spoken with local gardaí about it. I know what their needs are, but there is no plan. I must raise that today and ask the Minister of State to check that out and see what is envisaged.

Look at how this will be done in the future; you have the idea of a Garda Commissioner as a CEO, looking after all of the different assets; you have approximately 19,000 and possibly €2 billion worth of funds going into An Garda Síochána and also has a vast estate management function. It has a huge property estate and how will that be managed? I look around my area for examples of this. Dalkey Garda station was closed down, which is fine, but it is just sitting there and going to rack and ruin. It is not being used for anything. We have a significant administrative pressure in the Dún Laoghaire area. An Garda Síochána needs place for administrative staff, which it is looking at renting in various places.

Dalkey station does not have to be a Garda station, but it could just as easily be a place for administrative work. It is under the aegis of the Office of Public Works and could be used as brownfield housing. The same is happening in the Kill of the Grange station. These stations are going to rack and ruin. Meanwhile, Cabinteely station where I recently was to visit members of An Garda Síochána to see the conditions in which they work. They do great work, but I do not understand how they work out of such a small and insufficient premises, relative to the area they are required to cover. Cabinteely is understood to cover the Cherrywood area. I am highlighting for my area but it points to the challenge and I do not yet understand, from what has been published, how the estate management will work. What is the link between An Garda Síochána, the ownership or otherwise of its assets, the OPW, the planning for policing and converting and using properties? It may be there, but I have not yet seen a good explanation of how that will work.

I have a long-standing interest in the Garda youth diversion office. I declare an interest, in that I used to be a member of the section 44 committee, which oversees the implementation of the Garda youth diversion programme. It is an interesting office because, in a way, it is a centralised office of expertise. It is also a quasi-judicial office, in the sense that with regard to everything related to youth crime or offending, or when young people come into contact with An Garda Síochána - clearly, we try to keep them out of the criminal justice system as much as possible - the director there is making decisions about whether to prosecute. It is already a specialist function. Given its quasi-judicial nature and extraordinary importance in crime prevention and diverting young people from the criminal justice system, it seemed curious to me - more than curious, problematic - and we put it into the annual report year after year, how it seemed to be invisible in the organisational structure of An Garda Síochána.

I recall that one year, I think it was 2015 or 2016, it simply did not feature on the organisational chart of An Garda Síochána. That may have been an oversight but I do not believe it was because we were raising it again and again. That spoke to me about a cultural problem at the time. I think that has been rectified somewhat but the reason I raise it is because it is a centre of excellence. It is what we are talking about, that is, dividing up functions and making it more professional and focused on the various areas. This is already a functional office but I am just not sure how that is replicated around the country. Is that function going to be in every division or in some? Given the level of expertise needed, the judgments needed about whether to prosecute, the already insufficient links it has to Tusla, and the fact that it does not have anybody from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, office to help make prosecution decisions, which lengthens the time needed to make those decisions, I wonder how that is going to work. If a decision is made not to prosecute a child because what that child really needs is a therapeutic intervention, anger management or training in relation to sexual violence or whatever it happens to be, he or she is referred into the Tusla system but there are not sufficient links there for An Garda Síochána, which made that referral, to be sure that the child got that therapy. These are important crime prevention measures. It is already insufficient and this is a centre of excellence. Similarly, the reason I make the DPP point is that when prosecuting a child - or not - time is very important. A child who was in an incident at 14 cannot be prosecuted at 17. All of these things are drawn out. I am using my chance to raise this with the Minister of State. I appreciate that I am out of time but I hope we can get more clarity on that point as the Bill goes through.

See this speech in context