Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill and make some comments on the situation of the Garda. It is a very serious concern to me that policing in Ireland is changing so much and so fast. It has changed dramatically in recent years. The concept of the garda on the beat or on the street has more or less disappeared. Community policing has been very much scaled back, unnecessarily so. The sight of one or two gardaí walking down the street in a town or village, or out in a patrol car, is long gone. The abandonment of rural Garda barracks over the past ten years was a retrograde step for policing in Ireland. It has left our rural areas devoid of the presence of gardaí, who are our friends, our custodians and the people who knew exactly what was happening, and when and where. This has led to an increase in rural crime, notably robberies of property and animals. Gangs are marauding across the country using the motorways we have built, targeting places to rob. Unfortunately, there is also a huge increase in the presence of drugs, which are now available in every town and village in the country. They are no longer a plague within cities; they are a plague throughout the whole country. This increase in crime coincides with the removal of rural Garda stations.

Many speakers referred to the role of the Garda. Things have really changed for members of the force and that is because there is a greater emphasis now on paperwork and the need to comply with the system. Gardaí spend more time in front of a computer trying to account for what they do rather than being out doing all the things they should be doing. This is not the fault of gardaí. These changes were put in place by management, on the basis of policy, without an understanding of the practicalities of much of that change. Like Deputy Lowry, I have met many gardaí who are longing for the day they have their time served and can get out of the force. That is not right. They still do their job to the best of their ability but they are looking forward to getting out, and "getting out" is what they call it.

When I was a young fellow, my father always used to say that prevention is the best cure. A bullock, for example, would be dosed before it got sick. The key to policing is prevention. When I was young, that prevention was done by the local garda, who knew everybody in the village and to whom they were connected. He knew if you were out late the night before and he knew what time you would be home before you knew it yourself. He knew if you were doing something wrong. He did nothing to us only have a quick word to ask where we were the previous night. That was prevention. You knew you would not get away with things. Now, however, people know they can get away with things because the gardaí are not there.

Another aspect of policing is the sophistication that has crept into crime and the technologies available to criminals. Gardaí must be trained properly to deal with all those technologies. A fully dedicated cybercrime unit is needed, by which I do not mean a room with a door on which there is a nameplate stating "Cybersecurity Office". There must be a team of dedicated gardaí working with international counterparts, with civilian digital specialists working alongside them, to make sure cyberattacks and all that goes with them are detected and policed at the level that is now required, whether we like it or not.

We set up a community alert programme in my village of Belclare and we have more than 350 contacts on the list. Every village in the area has the same type of community text-alert system. It is used to good effect, but it is not policing; it is just a way of making sure people are connected with one another to alert them to what might be going on. It is no substitute for the garda on the beat or policing. The question is what we do. We are introducing a reform Bill and my take on it is that the Bill is fine, but we must be prepared to put the resources into the Garda and to make sure that we have enough gardaí so that the job is an attractive career for people to join. We will not go anywhere by changing the laws.

Over the years, management structures within the Garda were changed. Divisions were changed around to generate more efficiencies. Ultimately, the efficiencies were not achieved because all we were doing was stretching the cord a bit longer and trying to get more out of a garda, who perhaps did not have a squad car to use in order to go and check on something when it went wrong. Gardaí tell us they are frustrated and that it is not like it was previously. The bottom line is that we need more gardaí in every division across the country. It is our duty as legislators to ensure that the Garda are treated with respect. The best way to do that is to make sure they are fully resourced to do their job properly. It is no longer good enough to pay lip service to gardaí.

Over the years, respect for the Garda has dwindled. Gardaí are being attacked and reported, in some cases, rightly so, but we are asking a lot of people. They are good, young people who want to do a service to the State, but we are asking them to do this work without rewarding them and making sure that they are properly protected or that they have the necessary tools to carry out their work in the interests of society. It is important that we deal with the Bill, but it is also important that the funding comes with it, and that we do not again pay lip service to the Garda and say they will be all right. We must do it. If there is ever an economic downturn again, the last thing we should do is cut the resources to the Garda like we did before. That has been a retrograde step. I will finish on that point.

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