Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, have great reservations about the new divisional structures. I need to see that they will not dilute services on the ground to the people of west Cork who have seen a dilution of services in recent years.

Some years ago, we had the closure of many Garda stations under the then Fine Gael-led Government. This led to the decimation of rural Ireland and started a flood of closures of local businesses, post offices and so on. The local Garda station at the time, whether it was in Goleen, Ballinacarrig or Adrigole, or Ballinspittle, was hugely important to local communities. We won the battle to reopen Ballinspittle Garda station to the people of that town and of Kilbrittain, Kinsale and Ballinadee after a huge fight but we should not be left in that situation. This plan could roll us down the road of taking decisions away from the local community. I have been involved in community alert down through the years and I have seen the benefits of the scheme but community alert and text alert cannot replace the local garda working on the ground.

I must commend many gardaí. I could spend a lot of time talking about good, honest, hard-working gardaí who have given of their time, not alone their hours of work during the day but their commitment to their community, sometimes during the night, free of charge. Unfortunately, this was a given long ago by An Garda Síochána but we moved away from that. Unfortunately, many gardaí do not reside where they work. We are lucky to have Garda Jonathan McCarthy in Ballydehob. He is the most south-westerly permanent resident garda in Ireland. While we have a Garda station west of Ballydehob in Schull, none of the gardaí in the station lives in Schull and they come and go. However, Garda McCarthy and his family have resided there. There should be very serious consideration given to a garda in that situation to be made permanent for the local town and surrounding areas. While Garda McCarthy is being shared with another local area, Ballydehob deserves to have a full-time garda given that he has made a decision to move with his family into Ballydehob Garda station. I would give full support to that. The former Minister, Deputy Charles Flanagan, visited once and there was hope he might do something, but nothing happened afterwards.

I would like to give some credence to community gardaí who work so hard. I often mention Garda Damian White in the Dáil because he was one of the most outstanding community gardaí in my time growing up, as was Garda Brigid Hartnett as well. Garda James O'Mahony in Kinsale, who retired recently, and Garda Martin Hegarty of Castletownbere were two brilliant community gardaí. They also gave their time, both day and night, outside of duty times to help people, and set up the Garda youth awards. These were super awards that were needed to commend young people instead of maybe always giving out about them. That was a great initiative that was spearheaded by James O'Mahony, although Garda Martin Hegarty had other gardaí were also involved in it. I commend them on that.

Bodies such as joint policing committees cannot take on the work of the garda in the local community. I listened to the report of the joint policing committee and an independent councillor, Councillor Ben Dalton O'Sullivan, made a good point that despite serving more than 20,000 people, Carrigaline Garda station does not have a guaranteed opening time. Imagine not being able to guarantee times when the Garda station will open in Carrigaline, which has the fourth lowest garda numbers in the country for a town of 1,000 people. There is something wrong here. That is what we need to be concentrating on. Councillor Dalton O'Sullivan, an independent councillor, has gone to great lengths to try to resolve that but, unfortunately, that has not happened. We need to focus strongly on these issues going forward.

The Minister visited west Cork during the summer on the Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil road show. She forgot that other Oireachtas Members would have liked to have met her and raised with her other issues of importance in west Cork at the time. I know it was a political stunt but the Minister was appointed for the country, not Fine Gael. She must remember that going forward. We are all working hard here to represent our communities. I would have treated the Minister with the utmost respect if I had met her. She did not contact me or other representatives for the area. It is quite shameful because we have huge issues in west Cork that need to be addressed. It is no good announcing projects that have been funded for the past three or four years. We need to look at new ideas that west Cork deserves. The Minister was there and she failed to contact us.

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